Traian Băsescu: "Romania has a shot at total energy independence"

• According to "OMV Petrom" and "ExxonMobil", it is too early to determine whether the "Neptun" block will prove commercially exploitable

The exploitation of the natural gas deposit in the Black Sea, announced two weeks ago by "OMV Petrom" and "ExxonMobil", may begin in 2015-2017, president Traian Băsescu said yesterday. According to him, from that moment, Romania will be energy independent.

"A deposit has been discovered in the Neptun perimeter, of about 100 billion cubic meters and there are similar expectations for a few other deposits which will be probed in the coming period", Traian Băsescu said yesterday, after visiting the maritime drilling ship "Deepwater Champion", owned by "ExxonMobil".

He said that last year, Romania consumed 14.2 billion cubic meters of natural gas, of which 11.4 billion cubic meters produced domestically and 3 billion from imports. "Just run the numbers to see how many years the newly found deposit would last us before we had to import natural gas again. Romania has a shot at total energy independence".

If similar volumes of natural gas will be found in the other four-five deposits of the Neptun perimeter, Romania might be able to provide natural gas not just for itself, but for other countries in Europe as well", president Traian Băsescu said.

He also said that the exploitation will begin after all the explorations will have completed and, most likely starting in 2015, 2016, 2017, Romania will be completely energy independent.

Two weeks ago, "OMV Petrom" and "ExxonMobil Exploration and Production România" have announced the finding of a natural gas deposit in the Black Sea, with an estimated volume of 42 to 84 billion cubic meters.

Johann Pleininger, member of the board of directors of "Petrom", said at the time: "Together with our partner ExxonMobil, we have begun the exploration drilling at the Domino-1 well, the first deep exploration well of the Neptun block, with encouraging signs. By February 3rd, the well indicated the presence of hydrocarbons".

The representatives of the two companies said at the time that it was too early to determine whether the "Neptun" block would prove to be commercially exploitable or not. However, if the works will confirm the technical and commercial feasibility of producing natural gas at great depth in the Neptun block, the future investments in the exploration and development stages could reach a few billion dollars, and extraction might not begin earlier than the end of the decade.

Domino-1 is located in the Neptun Block, 170 kilometers offshore, at a depth of approximately 930 meters. Drilling operations begun in December 2011, and are set to be completed this year.

According to specialists, the deposits begins 7 mile South West of the Snake Island, in Romania's territorial waters, and it is located 15 to 18 miles away from the Blue Stream underwater pipeline.

The deposit seems to transcend Romania's territorial waters, expanding into those of Ukraine and Turkey. Thus, the Romanian explorers seem to be competing with the others not only on who gets to begin exploration first, but also on the volume of extracted natural gas.

The natural gas market in Romania grew 3% last year, reaching 14.2 billion cubic meters, of which about 11 billion cubic meters are produced domestically. Domestic consumption is covered by the output of "Romgaz" and "Petrom", as well as through imports from Rusia, from the "Gazprom" group.

Last year, "Petrom" extracted 5.23 billion cubic meters of natural gas, 3% higher compared to 2010. Last year, the natural gas output of OMV stagnated at approximately 8.3 billion cubic meters, according to data presented by the Austrian group.

Companies which have concessions in the Black Sea comprise OMV Petrom, ExxonMobil (USA), Lukoil (Russia), Sterling Resources (Great Britain) and MOL (Hungary).

Towards the end of the 70s and in the 80s, Romania had an output of over 30 billion cubic meters a year, with peaks of more than 35 billion, but output gradually declined after 1989.