Coalition agreement on the offshore law for the exploitation of Black Sea gas

PSD chairman Marcel Ciolacu announced on Tuesday that an agreement had been reached in the Coalition for the offshore law, which would allow the extraction of gas from the Black Sea.

“We agreed in the Coalition to resolve the situation of the Offshore Law that regulates the exploitation of natural gas in the Black Sea. We all agree on the distribution of revenues from this operation that most of it should go to the Romanian state and a smaller part to private companies. Specifically, we are talking about 64% for the state and 36% for companies, respectively. After 4 years of postponements and hesitations, I am glad that I have reached a conclusion from which the Romanians will have, in the end, to gain. We know that there are interested companies that could quickly start exploitation, an even more important chance in the context in which Romania wants to reduce its dependence on Russian gas. The ones from ANRM claim that in the Romanian part of the Black Sea there are gas deposits estimated at 200 billion cubic meters, given that the national consumption is about 11 billion cubic meters ”, Ciolacu said.

The offshore law has been blocked in Parliament for more than four years and there are various projects in this regard. Both PSD and PNL have different versions of legislative initiatives that are in different stages of debate in Parliament.

The bill announced by the president of PSD, Marcel Ciolacu, is a new one, discussed for several months inside the Coalition and which will be made public next week. The normative act amending the Offshore Law would unblock the investments for the extraction of gas from the Black Sea.