Nicolescu: "Gazprom shall cut, again, the gas supplies"

Gazprom notified again the Romanian authorities that it will cut by 10%, starting from today till tomorrow, the gas supplies to our country, informed us yesterday the minister delegated for Energy, Răzvan Nicolescu.

He also stated: "The gas imports recorded a normal level on Monday (n.r. yesterday) still starting from Tuesday (n.r. today) till Sunday they will be by 10% under the agreed volume. We must get used to this state of affairs, that we will be faced with in the following months. From the point of view of security of supply, the quantities are absolutely insignificant and there will be no problems even if the supplies stop completely and will be recommenced in spring, even if the this winter will be extremely severe".

In this context, the minister Nicolescu promised again that the population will not be affected by the cut in the gas supplies in this winter not even if the gas supplies from Russia will be totally stopped and recommenced in spring, or if we will face a severe winter.

The official stated that Transgaz hasn't got by now any answer related to the reason for this cuts and says that it tried to hold discussions yesterday with the Russian ambassador in Bucharest, but he was not successful since the ambassador was not in Bucharest.

According to Răzvan Nicolescu our country has currently deposits amounting to 2.5 billion gas cubic meters and will have 2.8 billion cubic meters by the end of the storage cycle, compared to the quantity of 1.8 billion cubic meters imposed by ANRE (the energy market regulator) for this winter.

The Minister of Energy stated that he held discussions with his correspondents from Bulgaria, Moldavia and Serbia, that he informed about Romania's possibility to help them which is extremely limited, except for Iaşi-Ungheni interconnector. The export impossibility is due to technical problems, that will be solved starting from 2016.

A new series of sanctions of the European Union against Russia entered into force on Friday, that involve a limited access to the capital markets of the EU for some oil companies as well as from the defense sector. The Union restricted the access to the European capital for Rosneft, Transneft and the oil branch of the giant Gazprom - Gazprom neft.