Energy Minister Burduja: “Works on the Neptun Deep project have reached 33 percent, ahead of schedule”

The Neptun Deep project has already exceeded an execution schedule of 33 percent, announced on Friday the Minister of Energy, Sebastian Burduja, in a Facebook post.

“Today, in the Port of Constanta, I visited the Transocean Barents platform, a technological marvel that Romania relies on in the process of extracting gas from the Black Sea, through the Neptun Deep project, Romania’s most important energy project after the completion of reactors 1 and 2 at Cernavodă in the period 1990-2000. The Prime Minister of Romania, Marcel Ciolacu, Deputy Prime Minister Marian Neacşu, Minister of the Environment, Mircea Fechet, Head of the Chancellery, Radu Oprea, and the managements of the companies Romgaz and OMV Petrom participated,” Burduja wrote.

According to him, the American platform, one of the largest in the world (“Mighty Barents”), has been in Romania for several months and is ready to go offshore and start drilling. Burduja says that the platform will reach approximately 160 kilometers from the coast, near the town of Tuzla, where it will put into operation ten Romanian gas exploitation wells, at depths of over 4,000 meters.

“Transocean Barents is a colossus that words can hardly describe, and images are not enough either. It is 90 meters high and 120 meters long, a complex assembly of machinery and equipment that will extract the gas, at very high pressures, and from 2027 – or maybe even sooner – it will reach our homes, through the Tuzla-Podişor main, which is also being worked on at an accelerated pace through the Transgaz effort”, the Minister of Energy also stated.

He showed that Neptun Deep is one of the largest projects through which Romania and European states can ensure their energy independence and security, along with competitive prices for ordinary people and companies.

“Neptun Deep has economic and geostrategic importance – let’s not shy away from calling things by their real names. The four-billion-euro investment, in partnership between Romgaz and OMV Petrom, will bring over 20 billion euros to the state budget and over 100 billion normal cubic meters, doubling Romania’s production,” the minister believes. He says that Romania will be, indisputably, the largest gas producer in the EU.

“One word defines this project: courage. The courage of Romgaz, which took over the participation in the project from Exxon. The courage of both companies, of the people who bear the brunt of the investment, of the crew of 160 experts, of the institutions in Romania, which have undertaken to support this strategic investment. It is no wonder that our adversaries – state and non-state – do not want us to succeed. Neptun Deep bothers those who for decades have used their energy resources to blackmail an important part of the free world. It also bothers some environmental activists, who are trying everything to sabotage it, from lawsuits to propaganda actions, although they were deafeningly silent when, recently, two Russian oil tankers sank and caused a huge ecological catastrophe in the Black Sea. Biodiversity only matters when ‘it has to’, apparently,” declared Sebastian Burduja.

He mentioned that the Neptun Deep project will be completed by Romania, “as we have assumed from the very beginning.” “Those who do not want an energy-independent Romania will not stop us. Romanian gas in our homes and in our country’s economy will bring security and lower prices,” the minister concluded.