Bogdan Tudorache
The American company BSOG and Grup Servicii Petroliere launched the MGD project, the first Romanian offshore natural gas exploitation project developed by the American company, with a total investment of over 600 million US dollars (400 million dollars in the project and another 200 million in related activities), according to BSOG CEO Mark Beacom, responding to energynomics.ro.
“In fact, Romania should not import any cubic meters of gas,” says Beacom, who claims that the first gas molecule in the MGD project will enter the local transportation system in the middle of next year.
Present at the launch ceremony of the project, US Ambassador Adrian Zuckerman criticized Russia’s hegemonic position in the region, arguing that “achieving energy diversity in the region” is a topic of utmost importance for the United States.
“Russia is using natural gas to blackmail vulnerable governments in the region… In terms of gas resources, Romania is an island of freedom, surrounded by Gazprom,” Zuckerman said, adding that the United States supports the reduction of dependence on gas imports.
At the same time, Mark Beacom argues that legislation hostile to new offshore exploitation projects, adopted in 2018, must be repealed.
“For Black Sea projects to take off, it is absolutely necessary that all legislation hostile to investments in oil fields in the Black Sea, which was adopted in 2018, disappear completely. And those rules that currently allow foreign companies and foreign producers bringing natural resources to Romania to the detriment of local companies and producers must disappear. Romania must ensure that it can produce its own gas without problems, without imports,” Beacom said.
”This project is entirely a Romanian project, made with teams of Romanian specialists, with Romanians, with Romanian equipment. We started installing the underground pipe a few days ago. Somewhere in the middle of next year, the first gas will enter the national transport system,” added Gabriel Comănescu, CEO of GSP, the main contractor with local capital in the project.
The Midia Natural Gas Development Project (MGD project), the first natural gas development project in the Romanian continental shelf of the Black Sea since 1989, has the capacity to cover in the first phase 10% of Romania’s natural gas demand.