The targets regarding the filling of natural gas deposits have been exceeded and there will be no problems with electricity and natural gas this winter, said the Minister of Energy, Virgil Popescu, on Wednesday, at the briefing at the end of the Government meeting.
“We are at an accelerated pace and we have practically exceeded the targets we assumed for filling natural gas deposits. (…) Today, notice that we have exceeded 70% of the degree of filling of the deposits. Practically, we have over 2.14 billion cubic meters in natural gas storages. We are going at an accelerated pace, we are not stopping storage and we hope to exceed this target of 80% on November 1, as was assumed and approved by regulation in the Council of Ministers, on July 26, if I’m not mistaken,” explained Virgil Popescu, according to Agerpres.
He pointed out that the stocks were inventoried to be able to get through the winter well, and the Oltenia Energy Complex is on schedule with the coal stocks, and he expressed his hope that the drought will not affect hydropower production too much.
“It will have a higher production of about 900,000 tons of coal this year, which will also bring it additional electricity production. We rely on the Oltenia Energy Complex for additional electricity production, and the production coal-based for this winter, in the short term, is already on the chart, higher than last year. Obviously, we are worried about this drought. We notice, on the other hand, on the weather forecasts, that the flow of the Danube has started to increase slightly at the upstream border. Looking today, I saw that it exceeded 1,850 cubic meters per second, going to cross 2,000 cubic meters next period. Hopefully this drought won’t affect hydro production that much, but we are prepared, as I said, with coal power taking over some of the potential drought issues, we’re not going to have electricity and natural gas issues this winter, and that’s what I wanted to convey from here at the Government’s table,” pointed out the Minister of Energy.
He stressed that he presented to the Government and sent to the Prime Minister all the investment plan that the Ministry of Energy has already developed.