Romgaz CEO: Black Sea gas to be traded under transparent and non-discriminatory procedure

National gas corporation Romgaz will trade the gas extracted from the Black Sea shelf through a transparent and non-discriminatory procedure that complies with all the provisions of the offshore law, and which will be developed by the Romgaz Black Sea Limited branch, the company's CEO Razvan Popescu said on Wednesday, adding that Romgaz will announce the market when these steps will be taken.He stressed that the market has already shown its appetite for the gas and that it's unlikely that there will be any issues with trading it, but that it's still too early to discuss the matter."Before a gas producing company starts these sales, you realize that it interacts with the big players in the business, with the traders, with the large-scale consumers, and all these meetings have taken place. We gauged the market's appetite, we looked at what the amounts would be, we know for the most part what the deadlines when they would want this gas are, and I don't think there will be any problems with selling it. Anyway, it's rather early, we are just at the beginning of 2025, the drilling is just about to start. We have time until 2027 to conclude these contracts," the Romgaz CEO told the ZF Power Summit 2025 on Wednesday.Asked what the next steps are regarding the Neptun Deep offshore gas project, Popescu replied that the Transocean semi-sub rig will soon set out to the sea in order to start drilling the ten wells that make the project."At the same time, oil- and gasfield services company Saipem, which is the EPC contractor in the project, is building the productive infrastructure so that the Black Sea operations reach a peak in 2026, along with drilling and installing the production infrastructure. For Romgaz, this comes with high costs, so to speak, the real cash burn is only starting now. We had the first bond issue last year, which was a real success and showed a real interest of the international markets in this project, in the first place. But we still have at least one more bond issue to carry out. We see that the financial landscape is changing, there are challenges, this year will be packed with challenges both on international and local markets and we must very wisely and carefully choose the moment of the next bond issue," explained Popescu.The Romgaz CEO mentioned that after several years of decline, the company's production increased by over 3.6%, and that the output boost is partly the result of investments made in previous years, especially in the Caragele onshore project, which remains a priority."Another deep well was completed at Caragele in January, and we hope to set it into production by the end of March; we still need to run production tests and connect it to the productive infrastructure. Right now, we are drilling two more deep wells in Caragele, one of which goes down 4,910 meters, and drilling of another one is about to kick off. These investments are absolutely necessary for maintaining this high level of production and this fast pace, given that Romgaz-owned deposits and gas fields are mature and their depletion rate is higher. So we invest not just in drilling, but also in the productive above-ground infrastructure. We are talking here about electric compression stations and drying stations," Razvan Popescu explained.