Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan announced Sunday evening that he is meeting with OMV representatives on Monday, who have come up with a solution that takes into account a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz transit for a long period of time, according to Agerpres.

“I think that Mr. Stern (ed. – OMV president), with whom I am meeting tomorrow, because we have a meeting with the management of the OMV company, has come up with a solution or an estimate that takes into account a blockage of transit through the Strait of Hormuz for a good period of time. Under such conditions, it is certain that the current turbulence that is on the crude oil and fuel market will increase, possibly degenerating into a crisis. Now we have some turbulence, because these supply chains are no longer functioning. Only 10% of the normal traffic through this strait has passed in these two weeks. It is obvious that those who were supplying in Asian countries have a supply deficit, as such they are buying from everywhere and additional pressure has appeared on both quantities and prices, which has generated attempts to calm things down, releases of fuel from countries’ reserves, increased production, permission to buy crude oil produced by Russia without sanctions. So all these measures that have been adopted in the last few days are trying to reduce the pressure on this market. But I hope that we do not end up in this situation and that in a reasonable period of time, a week or two, things will be restored in such a way that these supply chains will function. All in all, because of this war, it was inevitable, both from an emotional point of view, because this is happening, but also from a real point of view, because the quotes on all markets have increased by 40-50% in these days, to have an increase in fuel prices, which is currently the case all over the world, from the United States, where I understand that there are increases of approximately 30%, to other parts of Europe, where we have these increases”, Bolojan said, on Digi24.

According to Bolojan, diesel, which is a scarce product in our area, had a much higher increase, from 60-70%, while gasoline is below the increase in crude oil.

“So the big pressure for growth is on diesel. Romania, from this point of view, has much larger gasoline refining capacities, we are gasoline exporters, that’s why the pressure in Europe, but also in Romania, is on the diesel component. What are we doing these days? First of all, we had no way to avoid this growth. This is a certain situation and all countries in Europe are in our situation and all countries are analyzing what to do, because if things degenerate, so the crisis worsens, to take certain measures to temper these increases. And then, during this period, we acted on two, three components. (…) We adopted the support scheme for transporters. It was a scheme that expired at the end of this month. We gave them predictability until the end of the year, through which, from the cost of excise duty, we will bear not 65 bani as before, but 85 bani, with a quarterly evaluation, in such a way that, if things go in a bad direction, we can increase this compensation, if, at some point, prices decrease and return to normal, we can reduce the compensation. We will also do this for farmers, so that those two important segments that have direct effects on the economy, transport and agriculture, have protection on this issue”, Ilie Bolojan also said.