E.ON is unhappy with the returns of its Romanian investments

Shareholders of German group are unhappy with the returns of their investments in Romania"s energy sector. Frank Hajdinjak, general manager of "E.ON România", yesterday said, at the Energy Focus seminar: "If instead of investing in gas and electricity distribution in Romania, our shareholders had kept the money in the bank, they would have had a better return. I"m not referring to the money paid for Electrica Moldova and Distrigaz Nord, bur rather the amounts invested after the purchase, in developing and modernizing the networks. We are plagued by ever changing laws, by state companies which don"t pay us what they owe us, by taxes that spring up over night and by costs which are not included in fees. This doesn"t mean that E.ON will withdraw from Romania. We are here for the long term. But the German parent company will be very careful in continuing its investments in Romania, because there is a lot of wariness in starting new projects".

He said that the Romanian Railways Company (CFR) owes E.ON, Enel and CEZ over 1.4 billion lei in electricity bills.

E.ON still has to recover around 70 million lei from the Regional thermal plants, and the Mayoralty of Piatra Neamţ has charged the company 70 million lei for the land that its distribution installations reside on. E.ON can"t recoup this fee from the tariffs approved by the National Energy Regulator (ANRE).

The E.ON Romania official estimates that the reorganization of the energy market into two major state owned companies could be beneficial, if the two companies will have a transparent policy and provide indiscriminate access to the available energy.

Frank Hajdinjak said that E.ON is interested in participating in new joint ventures with the state-owned energy companies for developing new production capacities or for upgrading certain exiting assets. "All that matters is that the investment is a good one, that the influence of the political factors is reduced and that there is legislative stability in the long run", added the general manager of E.ON Romania.

In the beginning of this year, managers of E.ON România announced that the company will invest almost 2 billion lei by 2012 in expanding and modernizing the electricity and natural gas distribution network. Since the takeover of Distrigaz Nord and Electrica Moldova and so far, E.ON has invested around a billion lei in the networks for the distribution of gas and electricity.