The offshore law will be voted on Wednesday and will be submitted immediately to the Chamber of Deputies, but any change in this normative act must be negotiated and agreed in the governing coalition, said the president of the Senate, Florin Cîţu. He claims that there are no changes in the segment of corporate taxation.
“We already have Wednesday’s plenary ready. If it was ready today, the plenary was ready for today. If not, Wednesday is the plenary ready for the offshore law, it will be voted on Wednesday and will go immediately to the Chamber of Deputies. (…) The initiators came with a form, any change must be agreed in the coalition, because otherwise it will not pass,” said Florin Cîțu.
The new offshore law is still insufficiently satisfactory for investors, Black Sea Oil & Gas (BSOG) officials previously told Energynomics. They argue that excise taxes are not being eliminated, a critical point in the decision of companies to invest in offshore gas perimeters in the Black Sea, in recent years.
“The evaluation of the draft of the new offshore law shows us that it does not eliminate the tax on additional income that blocked offshore projects in the Romanian continental shelf of the Black Sea in the last four years. BSOG developed the MGD project on the premise that these offshore tax measures will be repealed by the time production begins. We have repeatedly stated that the extremely burdensome additional taxation is contrary to the assurances and legal provisions offered by the Romanian State when investors entered the country, it is very onerous and makes Romania uncompetitive compared to other offshore jurisdictions,” told Energynomics BSOG officials.
“While Romania continues to explore opportunities and wants to impose higher taxes on offshore projects, Turkey has proactively decided to reduce taxation (exemptions from customs duties, VAT and other taxes) and will be prepared to put gas discovered off the Black Sea belonging to Turkey since 2023 into production,” they added.
For now, however, Florin Cîțu says that there are no changes to the overtaxation regime.
“From what I’ve seen so far, no (there are not changes in the law). At the moment, what we have is an offshore law, if changes are to be made, I repeat, in order for them to be successful in passing, they must be negotiated in a coalition, otherwise it makes no sense, we will discuss them in vain,” Cîțu said.
