For one day, Romania is the capital of strategic energy investments, as that the European Commissioner for Energy and 17 ministers from the region are discussing how to reduce the region’s dependence on energy produced in the Russian Federation, Minister of Energy Bogdan-Gruia Ivan said on Monday.
„For one day, Romania is the capital of strategic energy investments, with the European Commissioner Dan Jorgensen here, as well as the ministers of the 17 states in the region, eight of them members of the European Union and the other nine from the region, from Austria to Greece, Ukraine, Serbia and all the other countries in the region that may face the same challenges as we do today in Romania, very high price of electricity, a moderate price of natural gas, but all of which must have predictability regarding the future and the economies we all represent,” Bogdan-Gruia Ivan told a conference organised on the occasion of the ministerial meeting of the Central and South-Eastern Europe Energy Connectivity High-Level Group (CESEC).
He stated that, after this meeting, Romania is taking on the role as integrator and leader in the region in order to develop, together with its other neighbors, a common strategy, to be discussed and presented to the European Commission, in respect to the future financial exercise of the European Union, funding lines for investment in hydro, gas and nuclear electricity generation capacities, as well as investments in energy and gas transmission and distribution networks.
„At the same time, we are talking about an extremely important and strategic project for the supply of natural gas in the region and namely the vertical corridor which we are developing together with our friends and partners in the United States of America. We are proactive, seeking solutions together and we are serious partners, we in Romania, as hosts, together with the other 17 states in the region, in order to shape a common strategy with Commissioner for Energy Dan Jorgensen, the European Commission, but also with our allies and friends in the US,” Minister Bogdan-Gruia Ivan said.
In his turn, the Energy Commissioner said that one of the main topics of Monday’s meeting, as well as the overall collaboration, is that South-Eastern Europe would gain several benefits if it were to be more interconnected.
The European official said that this was also one of the main priorities within the European Commission, mentioning that they wanted to help as much as they could. He explained that there was, of course, a technical dimension, and that they were working hard on it. He added that there were also financial aspects, where it might be possible to find support at the level of the European Union, bringing to mind that, in the past, the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) in the energy area had provided support for similar projects, and that they had now decided to increase this funding fivefold in the next multiannual financial framework, from less than six billion euros to almost 30 billion euros. European Commissioner for Energy Dan Jorgensen said this was proof that, at the level of the Commission, they were very willing to support such projects.
The European Commissioner for Energy and Housing, Dan Jorgensen, is in Romania on Monday in order to attend the ministerial meeting of the CESEC High-Level Group organised in Bucharest by the European Commission together with the Ministry of Energy. AGERPRES
