There will be no investigation on the price of natural gas

Alina Toma Vereha,

Cristina Mihalaşcu

The assembled Chamber of Deputies rejected yesterday, after a ballot with 137 votes in favor, 51 against and 9 abstentions, the request of the Commission for Investigating Abuse, Corruption and Petitions on the creation of a commission for investigating alleged abuse in the natural gas sector. Even as early as yesterday, Social-Democrats and Liberals announced that the parliament groups of the two parties do not support the creation of an investigation commission. The reasoning of the two groups was that there is already one commission which is investigating this case and it would be pointless to "come up" with a new one.

"I do not dispute the need to investigate this situation, every citizen has the right to pay European fees, but creating a sub-commission means wasting money and resources", Liberal Eugen Nicolăescu said. Deputy Aura Vasile also argued, on Monday, before the assembled Chamber of Deputies, that the creation of this new commission requested by Deputy Adrian Gurzău is pointless.

Mr. Gurzău, who is the Vice-President of the Abuse Commission, stated for "Bursa", that the decision of his colleagues was an unpleasant surprise for him, and that he will try to come up with a different way to eventually receive the approval to create the commission. He said: "It is obvious to me that there is something wrong with the price of gas, especially as many members of the Parliament do not want this investigation to get off the ground. The only thing I can tell you for the moment is that me and my colleagues are looking for another solution to get these investigations under way".

The Commission for Investigating Abuse, Corruption and Petitions of the Chamber of Deputies wanted the creation of a sub-commission which would initiate a complex investigation of all the operators in the energy sector, following the petitions from ordinary citizens which challenged the decision of ANRE (the energy market regulator) to only cut the price of gas by 3%, starting May1st. Complaints were also received concerning the formula used for converting the number of cubic meters of gas used into kWh. Deputy Adrian Gurzău claims that this allowed gas bills to be inflated by about 10%.