Natural gas is the most important form of energy in Romania’s the final consumption structure. In 2015, gas accounted for 29% of the total demand, followed by oil products with 26%, 19% renewable energy sources (RES (including hydro), 17% coal and 9% nuclear energy. Gas consumption is almost equally divided between the domestic and industrial sectors – in the latter gas is used primarily in the production of electricity and as raw material in petro chemistry.

Important market players
already bet that days with oversupply of crude oil will soon to be outdated and that the market will return to balance – and therefore back in the situation backwards.

Plummeting oil prices and fallen revenues triggered a chain reaction in Turkmenistan, which has a current account deficit of about $6 bn. Ashgabat devalued the currency by 19%. There have been reports of massive food shortages and unpaid wages.

How much will we pay for natural gas in 2017?

Given that Romania is quickly moving towards the completion of a centralized natural gas trading market – including through the elimination, from April 2017, of the predetermined price for the internal production of natural gas – it is necessary to make use of the current mechanisms and specific regulations, and to introduce new ones, to limit the effects of possible massive price volatility caused by speculative behavior

The Energy Ministry posted on December 19 the Energy Strategy of Romania 2016-2030, with an Outlook to 2050. It has been a long-awaited document, on which stakeholders have for years pinned hopes about favored energy policies and from which decision-makers, public and private, expect guidance in the coming years.

Romania’s capacity auction is a significant step in regional gas market opening. At the end of July 2016, Transgaz has signed gasinterconnection agreements with its Bulgarian and Ukrainian counterparts in order to increase interconnectivity and allow bidirectional flow from Ukraine to Greece.

The introduction of the additional tax must be fair, proportionate, reasonable, fair, and the level of taxation must be determined according to objective, rational financial criteria corresponding to the taxpayer contribution (according to the Romanian Counstitutional Court practice)

In Romania, a number of industrial sectors that serve the public interest are strictly regulated – natural gas, railroad or electricity systems, to name a few. As such, for the local energy sector, and particularly for electricity, the transmission and distribution services are regulated as “natural monopolies”