Page 12 - EurOil Week 12 2023

EurOil POLICY EurOil

Romania to amend solidarity contribution

definition to cover OMV Petrom

ROMANIA THE government and the lawmakers in Roma- include the revenues derived from the sale of
nia are working on amending the solidarity petroleum products resulting from the refining
The government wants contribution calculation methodology so as to of a company’s own crude oil production in the
to include OMV Petrom include OMV Petrom among the companies calculation of the ratio that thus might increase
in its energy windfall required to pay part of their windfall profit gen- above 75%. The government has discussed this
tax. erated last year to the budget, but the final out- detail with the European Commission, accord-
come is still unclear. ing to Profit.ro.
OMV Petrom repeatedly declared that, based Separately, Social Democrat (PSD) lawmak-
on existing regulations, it is not liable to pay sol- ers amended the law that turns the government’s
idarity contribution since its specific revenues emergency decree into a law, by including the
from the sale of oil and gas, subject to the con- revenues derived from the sale of electricity
tribution recommended by the European Com- produced based on a company’s own natural gas
mission, account for less than 75% of its total production in the calculation of the 75% ratio.
revenues. The amendments proposed by the govern-
As a vertically integrated company, OMV ment and lawmakers may eventually result in
Petrom derives a large part of its revenues OMV Petrom paying to the public budget part
from the sale of petroleum products while the of its windfall profit derived last year from the
revenues from the sale of electricity are also record price of petroleum products and elec-
important. tricity – which is in the spirit of the European
The Romanian government, however, will Union’s recommendations. ™

Turkey gas hub will need time to come to

fruition concedes Kremlin spokesman

TURKEY RUSSIA has conceded that work to create a “gas Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea.
hub” in Turkey will amount to a complex project Turkey imports all its gas needs via pipe-
The task will not be that will need time to come to fruition. lines running from Russia, Azerbaijan and Iran
simple. Some countries in the West are bothered by or as liquefied natural gas (LNG) from suppli-
the prospect of Moscow attempting to use such ers including the US, Qatar and some African
a hub to send masked Russian gas to Europe, nations. It also has plans to draw discovered gas
enabling Russia to overcome some sanctions from a Turkish part of the Black Sea. ™
imposed over its war in Ukraine, but such con-
cerns were not mentioned by Kremlin spokes-
man Dmitry Peskov when he spoke to reporters
about the outlook for the project.
“It is clear that this is quite complicated work,
it is a rather complex project which, unfortu-
nately, cannot be implemented without time
shifts, without technical or other problems,”
Peskov told media, as reported by Reuters on
March 20.
He added: “Such situations are inevitable in
relation to the Turkish hub. We will follow it, we
will continue to work with our Turkish partners.”
President Vladimir Putin outlined the idea of
a Turkish gas hub last year as European coun-
tries moved to slash their imports of Russian gas
in response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine. His
proposal also came after unexplained explosions
damaged Nord Stream gas pipelines linking

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