The PNL leadership decided to draft a simple censure motion against the energy minister Toma Petcu, says PNL MP Virgil Popescu, deputy chairman of the Chamber of Deputies’ Industry and Services Committee and member of ANRE’s investigative commission.
“We will analyze fuel and electricity price increases, in January, and in August, the rises in gas prices, the extremely high rise in the heat price this winter. We will also discuss the exploitation of the Black Sea natural gas, the problems in the Jiu Valley, but also the management of the energy companies where the state is a shareholder, devaluing them by distributing 90% of their profits and leaving them without financing for investment. I will also remember about the problem of the heavy water supply from Drobeta Tr. Severin, a matter that Minister Toma Petcu keeps telling us that he is watching, but he does not come with a solution”, Popescu said, quoted by Bursa.
Popescu says the document will also address the gas stock issue.
“In my opinion, the suppliers have waited to see what will happen with Ordinance 64, whether it will be abrogated or not, if Romania will give up the Black Sea gas exploits, if we give up the BRUA project. Given that none of these has happened, they have found themselves uncovered, without gas supplies, and now, when they finally want to buy, it is obvious that the price is not the same as it was in the summer. I see it’s a trend in the market, alarmist rumors keep coming up in order to raise prices. I wonder who has an interest in doing this. Whether the Government is incompetent, more precisely the Ministry of Energy, which I am more and more inclined to believe, or there are interests above the Executive to create panic and problems to Romania this winter”, Popescu said, according to the quoted source.
“I understand that in the Government’s decision on the provision of winter stocks, recently approved by the Government, the level of gas stocks is slightly lower than last year’s stock levels.
If so, that is a problem. It means that the government did not predict properly the level of stocks, which is a serious deficiency at the level of the Ministry of Energy. We will file a motion of censure this week regarding the activity of the Ministry of Energy and Minister Toma Petcu, and we will also address the stock issue in the document. The government will have to answer to Parliament because it is the job of the Ministry of Energy to correctly calculate the gas stocks necessary to pass the winter period with no problems. I am also very interested in increasing the extraction capacities from storage and moving to the alternating extraction-injection cycle”, the liberal said.
“For me it is a false problem what it is said that half of Romania’s [gas] production would go for export when the Black Sea gas exploitation begin. However, Romania has joined the EU, we are a free market. We cannot block intra-community exchanges … I do not want to accuse anyone of bad faith, but I think these things are concerted, lately, exactly when – at the end of the year – there will be an auction for reserving BRUA interconnection capacity on Romania-Hungary relationship. If the Americans at Exxon, together with Petrom, who want to take out the Black Sea gas, do not take part in the auction, who do you think will buy the interconnection capacity? We might discover that it is Gazprom, and then we will really be dependent on Russian gas. I see that we are still trying to block to the biggest and the most strategic project of Romania, namely the exploitation of the Black Sea gas and I wonder who has such an interest”, Popescu also said.