Energy Minister Popescu: “We want to complete the Iernut plant this year; We have scenarios B and C ready”

“We want to complete the Iernut Power Plant this year, and if this cannot be done with the consortium that won the tender in 2016, we will complete it without them, because we have prepared both scenario B and scenario C,” said the Energy Minister, Virgil Popescu.

“We want to complete the Iernut plant this year, not to lose the 50 million euros from the National Investment Plan. And we want to complete it. If it will not be possible with the consortium who won the auction in 2016, we will complete it without them, that’s for sure. We have also prepared scenario B and scenario C,” Popescu explained.

According to the minister, Romania is still based on a share of 20% of energy produced from coal, which means that the transition to renewable must be considered.

“We fought in Brussels (…) on taxonomy: on gas, on nuclear. We did not win or lose. We can say that the discussion on taxonomy was postponed a bit, and gas and nuclear, together with agriculture, will be discussed in a subsequent delegated act. Practically, we still need to keep the battle going so that we can use natural gas with CO2 emissions within the taxonomy, which can obviously be feasible from a technological point of view. The transition from coal to gas renewable is a necessity for us and here we are talking about electricity production capacities: the transformation from coal to gas,” the official mentioned.

On the Neptune Deep subject, the Minister of Energy said he was optimistic about an agreement between Romgaz and Exxon.

“We must also have enough natural gas, and here we are talking about the Black Sea deposits. As you know, the Romgaz management announced that an offer has been submitted for the purchase of the company, practically Exxon Romania, which owns 50% of the Neptune Deep in the Black Sea. I am optimistic that we will be able to reach an agreement with Exxon and Romgaz will become the owner of half of Neptune Deep, which means that we will have gas for absolutely all the projects we want to do in Romania: Romgaz has a methanol plant in its investment plan because the best use of natural gas is not direct heating for the population, it is not even the production of electricity, even if it is a superior use, but it is petrochemistry, it is the production of methanol,” said Popescu.