Gazprom and Romgaz plan joint explorations

• The Russian gas giant is interested in exploiting several deposits on the territory of Romania

On Wednesday, Gazprom and Romgaz officials discussed opportunities for cooperating in the exploitation and exploration of gas and oil deposits outside the borders of Romania. The minister of the Economy, Adriean Videanu, said on Friday, in a press conference, that Romgaz, as well as Gazprom consider such a cooperation would provide opportunities for both companies, which are already active in the exploitation of several deposits concessioned outside the borders of their two respective countries. "Romgaz and Gazprom could cooperate for the exploitation of the two natural gas deposits in countries such as Iraq, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan or even Russia. Romgaz has geological data on deposits located in Iraq and in other countries. The Russians expressed their willingness to cooperate with Romgaz in this respect", Minister Videanu said.

Gazprom also said it was interested in cooperating with Romgaz in the development of the gas reservoir in Roman-Mărgineni, as well as in other ten locations where the Romanian company has depleted gas deposits. "Romania has a tradition of more than 100 years in the exploration and exploitation of natural gas and we also have depleted gas deposits, where we could set up gas storage areas. Gazprom also requested data on other deposits than the one in Roman-Mărgineni. We are talking a total capacity of storage of 2 to 6 billion cubic meters".

The construction and the operation of gas storage areas in Romania will be performed by a Russian-Romanian company, in which Gazprom and Romgaz will hold equal stakes. When asked whether the reservoirs will store domestic gas or will only store imported gas, the Minister of the Economy said: "We have not gotten around to discussing this type of details, but the logical approach would be to use them to store the gas that is imported in the summer, in order to ensure the stability of the gas supply in winter".

Romania also stressed that it would cooperate with Russia on investing in the production of basic-energy in high efficiency co-generation plants. Adriean Videanu said that Russia expressed interest in this project as well, as Gazprom is also a major producer of electricity.