Turkey could become Romania’s partner in Black Sea gas exploitation projects, with the huge discovery of gas from Turkish waters, said Daniel Apostol, director of foreign relations of the Romanian Federation of Petroleum and Gas Employers (FPPG).
On Friday, Turkey announced the discovery of deposits estimated at 320 billion cubic meters of gas in the Black Sea, near the perimeter of Neptun Deep in Romanian territorial waters.
“Turkey’s discovery is part of an effort by states bordering the Black Sea – other than the Russian Federation (and I am referring to Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine and Georgia) – to escape from the Russian energy hegemony. From a net importer, Turkey would become a significant producer and exporter of natural gas, but experts say this will not happen for at least five years and Turkey could attract major global players to the exploitation of these new deposits, as Romania wanted to do with the perimeters owned by the Black Sea,” says Apostol, according to Agerpres.
According to him, we could thus witness the entry of large world producers through the Bosphorus, if Turkey does not somehow choose a nationalist path and does not try to exploit with its own production resources.
“The problem at the moment is to find out how much of the announced discovery means it will be able to turn into actual production. And international energy markets will want to know what volume of annual production could enter the global energy circuit and at what prices. But because of the pandemic, the global crude oil and gas market is going through the biggest crisis in 100 years, with historic lows in demand volume and prices and even lower interest in investing in new production,” the gas federation official said.
Apostol recalled that, according to a study presented by the FPPG conducted by Deloitte, Romania could earn over 20 billion dollars in the extraction of natural gas from the Black Sea in the next decade and would ensure its energy independence.
“Unfortunately, the populist attitudes in the Romanian Parliament have given rise to a legislative framework that has not encouraged the presence of strategic investors in the Black Sea. The risk of losing this train and not finding the right moment to exploit the deposits is increasing. The pandemic has exacerbated the crisis in the oil and gas sector and driven away investors from many areas of high uncertainty, and the deposits discovered by the Turks are very close to an area where Bulgaria’s and and Romania’s maritime borders are converging and they are not far from the Neptune block of Romania, the largest gas field in the Black Sea discovered eight years ago by Petrom and Exxon,” added Apostol.