Croatia Declares Crisis Over Halt In Gas Supply

Croatia's government declared a crisis on Wednesday, after the country's deliveries of Russian gas halted, so it could make distributors cut gas flows to industry and give priority to homes, schools and hospitals.

"Such a decision is a precondition to force local distributors to reduce gas supply to industrial users," Deputy Prime Minister Damir Polancec told reporters.

He said the economy ministry was preparing to rank consumers in terms of priority. "Citizens will certainly get the full quantities of gas they need," Polancec said.

Prime Minister Ivo Sanader said Croatia had 370 million cubic metres of gas in storage and that should last around three weeks.
Sanader said an option would be to extend the winter break for schools if the situation seriously worsened.
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