Romgaz will be technically prepared to be in the market once the cap is lifted on April 1, said the company’s general manager, Răzvan Popescu.

“We started last year, we have advanced in terms of the entire IT part, the integration of supply systems into the Romgaz system, we have purchased the servers. From a technical point of view, I believe that we will be prepared so that, once the cap is lifted, on April 1, we can be in the market, but, obviously, it depends a lot on the quantities that we will have allocated by ordinance, because in past years Romgaz had somewhere around 80% – between 60 and 80% – quantities allocated by ordinance. The GEO was put into consultation, but it was not approved, we have not received it yet, we will probably receive these quantities in the next period and then we will be able to draw up, so to speak, the strategy for the coming year. Anyway, even with this allocation, we maintain our desire to be a supplier and we will enter both the household market and the small non-household market”, he argued.

Popescu specified that the draft emergency ordinance is clearer in terms of how the final price is formed.

“Romgaz has acted as a pillar of stability since 2022, with ordinance 27. Other ordinances followed. This one, according to the model we have seen, is somehow clearer in terms of how the final price is formed. It will no longer exert pressure on the Romanian budget due to the fact that there is no longer that 0.31 gap and it shows transparency in the way the price of natural gas is formed for the final customer, where we see that somehow the production part is less than half, meaning the real influence on the final consumer price is somewhere around 40% the production price,” he mentioned.

Regarding gas prices, Răzvan Popescu believes that the Neptun Deep project will put pressure on them.

“The energy transition has made it very clear: gas is a transitional fuel and many oil & gas companies have moved more towards green energy and, from my point of view, they have had the right approach, given Net Zero and the completion of this energy transition in 2050. At this moment it seems that this 2050 is a very ambitious target, it seems that these CCS technologies are in their early stages, especially in Europe. However, the fact that Neptun will have 8 billion that will be in the regional zonal market, where consumption is somewhere around 30, will certainly put pressure on these prices. The estimates that we have seen for the future are that the TTF price will decrease, that there will be a correlation between the TTF price in Europe and the American LNG, obviously, to which you add the costs of liquefaction, transport and regasification. Somehow, the expectations that the TTF price will decrease have been going on for a year already, they have not been fulfilled, but these are the expectations at this moment. If we look strictly in Romania during the summer and in general in recent years, you should know that the price was below the TTF. Yes, there are certain moments of consumption where it was indeed higher, but also against the background of these ordinances, the final price paid by the household consumer, by the thermal energy producers was capped. They were not impacted by the short-term movements that existed both on the PRM and on the TTF”, added the head of Romgaz, quoted by Agerpres.

The Ministry of Energy published last week the draft Emergency Ordinance for the continued protection of household natural gas consumers, during the period April 1, 2026 – March 31, 2027, according to which, for the consumption made during the mentioned period, the final price invoiced by natural gas suppliers to household customers, as well as to thermal energy producers, only for the quantity of natural gas used to produce thermal energy in cogeneration plants and in thermal plants intended for population consumption, is established by each supplier as the sum of four components, namely the acquisition component (established by a new formula included in the ordinance), the supply component (15 lei/MWh), the component represented by the regulated/established tariffs according to the regulations of the National Energy Regulatory Authority and the component represented by VAT and excise duties.