Minister Ivan: Large consumers in petrochemical industry - access to reasonable prices for Black Sea gas

Energy Minister Bogdan Ivan declared that he would propose that large consumers of electricity and natural gas, especially those in the petrochemical industry, have priority access at reasonable prices to gas produced on Romanian territory from the Black Sea.The Minister of Energy spoke about this measure during a press conference at the PSD headquarters, where the party's program for investments, jobs and economic development was presented."PSD comes with two very clear measures in this broad economic recovery program in terms of energy. First, for large consumers of electricity and natural gas, and I am referring here especially to the petrochemical industry, which represents approximately 70% of Romania's trade balance deficit. This industry is dependent to a proportion of approximately 65-70% on the price of natural gas. So at the moment when Romania is preparing for the exploitation of natural gas from the Black Sea, at Neptun Deep, through the Romgaz company which owns 50% of this extremely important project worth 4 billion euros, what PSD proposes is priority access at reasonable prices to gas produced on Romanian territory from the Black Sea for energy-intensive companies in the Romanian industry, with a direct target for those in the petrochemical industry, natural fertilizers, which will lead as a compound effect to a reduction in the first year of balance deficit by at least 1 billion euros," said Ivan.He added that, in order to provide predictability to Romanian investors and entrepreneurs involved in this activity, these measures will be legislated by the end of 2025, 12 months before gas exploitation from Neptun Deep begins."We will propose one more measure. In the last 10 years, Romania has removed approximately 56% of its gas and coal production from its production capacities, the production in the band. This means that, from being a net energy exporter, Romania is a net energy importer at very high prices, which creates competitiveness problems for Romanian companies. From this point of view, we propose the creation of financial instruments, funds for strategic investments in the energy in the band, through which we will use both financing instruments from funds for modernization, from other European sources or international financial instruments. We will no longer provide grants directly from the state budget, but we will talk directly about these investment mechanisms in the production of energy from nuclear, hydro or gas", Ivan specified.