Energy producers consider it essential to amend the offshore law that would allow the unblocking of major investments, such as those in the Black Sea, said on Thursday Oana Bucur, leader, Task Force Digitalization, within The Oil and Gas Employers’ Federation (FPPG), at the DigitALL 2022 conference organized by Energynomics.

“FPPG represents mainly the two largest producers in our country – OMV Petrom and Romgaz – along with other companies in the field. For a long time, there has been a great debate regarding the taxation of producers for natural gas. We are talking about the debate on the offshore law. This happens because above a certain level of cost that is easily reached at this level, everything that is obtained reaches, in fact, by over-taxation not at the producer, but elsewhere. Practically, from the point of view of the producers, it is essential now to amend the Offshore Law, which would allow the unblocking of major investments. It’s about the long-awaited investment in the Black Sea. I would also like to mention that the level of taxation in Romania is the fundamental obstacle in starting such projects. In Romania, taxation is four to five times higher than the European average, so from an investor’s perspective the environment is not attractive at the moment and we hope for a change of this situation as soon as possible,” said Bucur.

Regarding the energy prices of the last period, the FPPG representative pointed out that they are aligned at European level, and Romania does not have too many alternatives.

“On the issue of prices, we have a complex context, especially in these conditions, only this is the end of the discussion we can have. The beginning of the discussion is the investments we have to make in Romania, but major investments are still blocked. We are waiting for their release and this will certainly bring flexibility and lead the discussion more towards quantities, about what Romania can do concretely than from prices that, as you can see, are aligned at European level and it is not a situation in which Romania have many alternatives or differences compared to other countries,” said Oana Bucur, according to Agerpres.

Trends in 2022 in the digital world, the European digital energy agenda and the development of a European energy data sharing infrastructure are just some of the topics covered at the DigitALL 2022 conference, organized by Energynomics on Thursday.