Romania proposed at the extraordinary meeting of the Ministers of Energy from the European Union that the gas price ceiling be wider and not only target Russian gas, because otherwise there is a risk that the supply will be lower than the demand and the price for gas from other sources will increase, declared on Wednesday, at the briefing at the end of the Government meeting, the Minister of Energy, Virgil Popescu.
“Romania did not oppose capping the price of Russian gas. Romania proposed a broader cap, including the price of Russian gas, on the European market, because, in order to be able to very well decouple the price of gas from the price of electricity, it is clear that we must have a ceiling, a much lower price of gas. Or, if we cap only part of the market and the other market is left free, there is a risk that at a given moment the demand will be greater than the supply and the price of the other gas sources will increase: the gas Dutch, Romanian gas, gas from Azerbaijan, of LNG. And the proposal came, and believe me it will be taken into account. Several states proposed this,” Popescu explained when asked why Romania opposed the price cap to Russian gas, according to Agerpres.
He added that Greece came up with a “very interesting” proposal to remove the LNG part from the stock market index of the Dutch Gas Exchange, because its price at the moment is also artificially increased by the price of natural gas.
“We will work on a system in such a way as to protect the entire European natural gas market, to reform it. If we only took one source, then it might be unbalanced (market n.r) and the other sources would increase the price . Does the price of natural gas at 200 euros compared to 20 euros seem like a market price to you? It is a very high price, artificially increased and kept up by Russian gas speculation. So the price of 200 euros that is now, 198 euros, of 300 as it was, it is extraordinarily high compared to a real price of 20 euros. Consider that during the pandemic we had prices of 7 euros per MWh. So we are talking about very high prices, speculative prices. This is what we are talking about and what we want let’s reduce these speculative prices. We are not talking about an option for Romania to disagree. We wanted something broader. Obviously, a consensus will be reached,” explained the Minister of Energy.