Romania’s natural gas production will drop below one billion cubic metres over the next three decades, given that domestic consumption, that is some 17 billion cubic metres at the moment, will surely go up.
Subsequently, in spite of Romania’s European integration, the relations with Russia, which holds one third of the world reserves, will be bound to consider this future energetic dependence.
“The downward trend of the domestic production is connected to the exhaustion of Romania’s own natural gas reserves and to the depletion phenomenon, that is no longer finding any new natural gas deposits to be worked by the industry,” explains Mihai Gherman, head of the General Department for Evaluation and Concession of Mineral Resources within the National Agency for Mineral Resources (ANRM).
However, the international battle for discovering new reserves is fought in our country, too. The world petroleum giants, Amoco, Shell, Ramco and TotalFina Elf have invested $200 million in the exploration of the Romanian territory, once extremely rich in oil and gas and they have not settled down yet, although they have lost half of their money.
In Romania, some 13.6 billion cubic metres of natural gases were produced in 2000, while consumption amounted to 16.9 billion cubic metres. The gap between output and demand is imported from Russia.
As a comparison, Germany produces some 20 billion cubic metres a year, but this accounts for only 5% of the consumption.
The rest comes from Russia. Poland is already quasi dependent, as its domestic output amounts to less than 2 billion cubic metres, while consumption reaches some 11 billion cubic metres.
The highest natural gas output in Romania ever was registered in 1986, when it reached 36 billion cubic metres.
Back then, consumption was twice higher than it is now, in spite of the freezing cold in people’s homes, because the industrial giants were doing their job. In the meantime, we have remained among the largest consumers.
According to Oil & Gas Journal, in 1998 Romania ranked 25th among the largest natural gas consumers in the world, registering 18.2 billion cubic metres in consumption. It was behind China, Australia or India, but ahead of Pakistan, Belgium, Spain, Poland or Ukraine.
Holland-based Shell Company several years ago invested more than $50 million in the North Transilvania block to no avail, though, while Amoco (now part of British Petroleum Amoco) along with Wintershall (Germany) or Arco (the USA) lost $60 million for exploration works in a perimeter in the Carpathian Mountains.