Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca states that the building of a liquefied natural gas facility at the Black Sea, jointly with Azerbaijan, will lead to the diversification and addition of gas supply corridors from the Caspian Sea Basin to Europe, according to Agerpres.

The Head of the Executive participated on Wednesday, at the Victoria Palace, together with Mikayil Jabbarov, the Minister of Economy, and Parviz Shahbazov, the Minister of Energy of the Republic of Azerbaijan, as well as the Romanian Minister of Energy, Virgil Popescu, in the signing of a memorandum between the Azerbaijani company SOCAR and ROMGAZ, concerning a joint investment in a liquefied natural gas facility at the Black Sea.

„This afternoon there was a meeting between the representatives of the Ministry of Energy from Azerbaijan and the Ministry of Energy from Romania, of the two national companies, SOCAR from Azerbaijan and Romgaz from Romania, which will be directly involved in this project, a project that we are waiting for with great interest, because it is a new project, both for us and for Azerbaijan. We have discussed this possibility of building a facility for the first time on the occasion of the previous meeting we had with the President of Azerbaijan, Mr. Aliyev, on October 1, in Sofia. Now, less than three weeks later, the process is starting so that this project can begin to be implemented,” said Nicolae Ciuca.

He specified that the implementation of the project will start with a feasibility study, financed jointly by both parties.

„We expect to see, in a very short amount of time, the feasibility study completed. We have engaged an international company to carry out the feasibility study and, in this way, we have the guarantee that it will be completed, because we need this gas and the construction of capabilities in a very short time. In the end we hope to have the two terminals, on either side, on the Eastern shore and on the Western shore of the Black Sea, so that we can diversify and supplement the gas supply corridors from the Caspian Sea Basin to Europe,” said Ciuca.

He mentioned that, in the meeting he had before the signing of the memorandum with the Azeri officials, the discussions also covered the other elements of collaboration included in the overall strategic partnership between Romania and Azerbaijan.

„Furthermore, we are looking together for solutions for bringing gas from the Caspian Sea through the trans-Anatolian pipeline Turkey-Bulgaria-Romania and from Romania, of course, to the other beneficiary countries, one of them being the Republic of Moldova. It is a commitment of ours and Azerbaijan to be able to support the Republic of Moldova with the necessary amount of gas. Of course, there are other projects aimed at developing green energy capabilities. There are projects that I am certain that together we will put into value, taking into account the green energy production capacity in the Caspian Sea Basin, complementary to the green energy production capacity in the Black Sea and on the territory of Romania,” stated Nicolae Ciuca.

Agerpres