The Black Sea gas reserves, "a step toward energy independence"

According to the expert in energy issues, Cătălin Dimofte, the gas reserves should be exploited and not retained for the strategic reserve, whereas in the meantime, its value could plummet.

The expert in energy issues, Cătălin Dimofte, claims that the gases discovered in the Black Sea will not remove the imports of petroleum.

“So, the fact there are some gases, the volume is high, this is to say that we should cover the internal consumption almost entirely or entirely but you won’t remove the oil imports, for example”, Cătălin Dimofte said in a dialog with the editor of Radio Romania, Cătălin Lenţa.

The expert in energy issues, Cătălin Dimofte, says that the exploitation of gas “is a step in the direction of the energy independence”.

According to him, they should be exploited and not retained for the strategic reserve.

“I think it would be good for exploitable. Not necessarily with a speed and with an extraordinary despair, but it would still be better to exploit because the world is in an energetic transition from non-renewable resources, as gas, to something else. It is possible that in a very long horizon of time they may not mean much”, believes the expert.

An oilfield of a 42-84 billion cubic feet, which equals 3-6 times the annual consumption of Romania, was discovered in the Black Sea at the end of February.

On Monday, the President Traian Băsescu stated that the exploitation of gases in the Black Sea might be possible in 2015-2017, and Romania could become independent in terms of energy.

The Romanian gas market grew by 3 percent last year at 14,2 billion cubic feet, according to data presented on Wednesday by OMV Petrom.

Thus, the discovery from the Black Sea is equivalent with three to six times the annual intern demand to the estimated reserves by the companies.

Petrom extracted last year 5,23 billion cubic meters of natural gas, with 3 percent more than in 2010.

The other large producer of gas in Romania, Romgaz State company, produces quantities close to those extracted by Petrom.

The domestic consumption is covered both by the production of Romgaz and Petrom and also by imports from Russia, from Gazprom group.

The OMV gas production stagnated last year at about 8.3 billion cubic feet, on the basis of data submitted by the Austrian group.


Translated by Anamaria Petrache
MTTLC, Bucharest University