The Ministry of Energy has had numerous meetings with foreign partners to diversify gas sources and ensure independence from Russian gas, Minister Virgil Popescu said at a conference.
Popescu cited LNG and Azerbaijani gas as the main alternative to Russian imports.
He said that Azeri gas could reach Romania through Bulgaria and Greece, with the ministry having scheduled talks with counterparts in those countries in the next period.
Popescu also said that they are trying to diversify the supply, which will also take place through intermediaries that are not controlled by Gazprom, this being the reason for his trip to Saudi Arabia a few days ago.
“As for other natural gas sources, tomorrow is the meeting between the prime minister and a delegation from the Greek government. We have a meeting with the Prime Minister and Minister of Energy of Bulgaria on Friday. The southern corridor through which the Azerbaijani gas comes has an interconnection with the vertical corridor. In order for the vertical corridor to be operational, the interconnector between Greece and Bulgaria should be completed. The deadline given by the Bulgarian partners is for this summer,” said Popescu, during the conference organized by zf.ro.
“In the meantime, we also identified the old InterBalkan corridor, where Transgaz has already done all the reverse flow operations at Negru Voda. So we have a smaller corridor through which Azerbaijani gas can come directly through Turkey and Bulgaria. We identified all these sources, so I went to Turkey, Bulgaria, Azerbaijan, Saudi Arabia. We are also in talks with the state of Qatar precisely in order to have a diversification of supply sources,” he added.
However, the Minister could not give a clear deadline for amending the Offshore Law, following the statements of PNL President Florin Cîțu, according to which the Offshore Law will be amended expeditiously.
”You have seen the statement of the PNL president. Mr. Cîţu wants the emergency approval of the offshore law. I am convinced that this consensus has been reached at the level of the coalition, and we will probably continue to see the law in Parliament. I have been saying for a long time that the tax regime we have offshore is more burdensome than the onshore regime. We still have a problem that is currently being solved – it is related to the reference price at which the royalty payment is calculated. The royalty of natural gas producers is paid at the spot price of the day ahead of the Vienna Stock Exchange. And this needs to be reformulated, this is an order of the National Mineral Resources Authority, which has understood and put it up for public debate. Again, we sell in Romania, we must pay the royalty at the prices from Romania,” he said.
At the same conference, Christine Verchere, CEO of OMV Petrom, reiterated the need to have the amendments to the offshore law approved as soon as possible.
“We need the offshore law now!”, she said, explaining again that the project needed due diligence before the start of the investment, which would lead to the start of operation only four years after all the contracts were signed. At the same time, Romgaz also needs to sign the takeover agreement with Exxon, in order to allow OMV Petrom to become the project coordinator and to initiate the necessary procedures for the subsequent due diligence process.
