ROMGAZ HALTED DELIVERY OF METHANE GAS TO CET IAŞI

Starting yesterday morning, the Thermal Electrical Plant of Iaşi (CET) SA saw its supply of natural gas cut by Romgaz, due to an unpaid debt of 30 million lei towards the latter. Given that CET Iaşi has not yet created its stocks of coal and heating oil, customers of CET Iaşi no longer have running warm water starting yesterday.

"Romgaz had a board meeting on August 28th, where they discussed their unhappiness with the delayed payments of CET Iaşi. As far as I know, it was an amount of approximately 9 million lei, which was due by August 31st, according to the payment schedule that CET and Romgaz agreed on", said Gabriel Grigore, deputy mayor of Iaşi, two days ago. Also two days ago, Neculai Parasc, spokesperson of CET, said that "we (CET - ed. note) have requested that Romgaz wait until September 4th-5th before cutting off our gas supply, to allow us to come up with the money. We are now waiting for their decision and we are doing our best to prevent leaving inhabitants of the city without running warm water". The supplier"s decision became obvious yesterday morning, when the supply of natural gas to CET Iaşi was halted. "We are still negotiating the rescheduling of the debt", Neculai Parasc said yesterday. For now, there are 58,000 apartments that are connected to the centralized grid which no longer have warm water, because the heating oil stocks of CET Iaşi are only sufficient for two days.

In turn, officials of the mayor"s office are waiting for the state to come up with solutions. "We know the government passed an emergency decree on August 29th, discussing the allocation of 122 million lei for all the thermal plants in Romania, including CET Iaşi. Solving the issue of the gas supplier, depends on the amount allocated by the Government for us", said deputy mayor Gabriel Grigore. On the other hand, CET claims its household customers owe it some 27 million lei, excluding late payment penalties.