Page 4 - EurOil Week 26 2019

EurOil COMMENTARY EurOil
Romanian export plans stall
amid Black Sea delays
Romania risks missing market opportunities by delaying its export ambitions
ROMANIA
WHAT:
Romania has pushed back the completion of two gas export pipelines to Moldova and Central Europe
WHY:
Black Sea gas discoveries are taking longer to develop
WHAT NEXT:
The delays could
limit opportunities for Romanian gas overseas
ROMANIA has pushed back work on two key pipelines that will provide an export outlet for its gas, amid delays at its Black Sea projects.
Under a new ten-year development plan by Romania’s gas transport operator Transgaz worth €4bn ($4.5bn), completion of the Roma- nian section of the Bulgaria-Romania-Hunga- ry-Austria (BRUA) pipeline will be delayed by one year. Earlier the project, designed to pump Romanian gas to Central Europe and Bulgaria, was slated to start up in 2022.
Meanwhile, Transgaz does not expect to n- ish work on the Ungheni-Chisinau pipeline in Moldova until 2021. Ungheni-Chisinau repre- sents the nal section of a project to pump up to 1.5bn cubic metres of Romanian gas to Mol- dova’s capital, allowing the latter country to free itself from near total dependence on Russian energy.
Transgaz’s shareholders, which mainly con- sists of government bodies, aim to approve the new long-term investment strategy on July 29. It represents a revision of a previous plan rejected
in March that called for the faster implementa- tion of both pipeline projects. A er being cleared by shareholders, the strategy will be submitted to the market regulator ANRE for nal approval.
Offshore delays
Romania is almost energy independent, import- ing just 10% of its natural gas from Russia’s Gaz- prom. Following a spate of gas discoveries in the Black Sea, the government began talking up prospects for Romania to export gas to neigh- bouring states – many of which are far more reliant on Russia for their supplies. Bucharest last year even suggested that national gas pro- duction could double by 2025 to 18-20bn cubic metres.
But market uncertainty, exacerbated by new regulations that include a cap on some gas prices for local producers, means that many of Roma- nia’s o shore nds are taking longer to develop.
ExxonMobil and Austria’s OMV Petrom still have not taken a nal investment decision (FID) at the Domino eld, estimated to contain
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 26 04•July•2019