Prime Minister Nicolae Ciucă said on Thursday that at present there are no fears that Romania will not have the necessary gas for the winter of 2022 – 2023, stating that, so far, more than 1.6 billion cubic meters of natural gas have been stored.

“The measure is a precautionary one, a measure by which, as we have shown so far, we still need to maintain solidarity at the level of the European Union, and Romania has been a party to all decisions that have maintained and strengthened solidarity within European Union,” said the prime minister, asked at a press conference about the European Commission’s decision on reducing gas consumption, according to Agerpres.

He noted that the evolution of daily gas storage is “very consistent and encouraging” and that on Wednesday the threshold of 1.6 billion cubic meters of gas in deposits was exceeded.

“What I can tell you at the moment is that yesterday we exceeded 1,600,000,000 cubic meters in storage. As such, the evolution of daily storage is very consistent and encouraging, because, if you remember, when I was in Corbu and participated in the inauguration of the offshore operation, I specified that (…) there are four stages: a stage until August 1, the second stage – until September 1, then October 1 and November 1, so that we reach 80% of capacity on November 1. We should have reached 46% by August 1, 57% by September 1, 66%, if I’m not mistaken, on October 1 and 80% on November 1. … Progression and as the figures show today – we are above the assumed percentages and even at the end of last week we had 200 million cubic meters over what we had in warehouses in the last year’s similar period. As such, (…) we had a working group with all the institutions in the field of gas exploitation and storage and at the moment there is no fear that Romania will not have the necessary gas for the winter 2022-2023,” the prime minister explained.

According to the prime minister, the decision on reducing gas consumption will be taken “depending on the quantities of gas that will be in storage before the actual start of winter”.

“At the moment, our concern is to do it in such a way as to ensure the necessary resources of gas and coal in order to have energy in winter. It is not at all irrelevant for lignite mines to be able to extract and store as much as possible, not to encounter the situation we had last year, when we had a quantity in the deposits that ensured the operation of coal-fired power plants from Oltenia from 3 to 5 days maximum,” added Ciucă.