OPEN TO DEBATE: what’s the point of getting Black Sea gas if it is exported?

Romania abandoned the condition that at least half of the natural gas extracted from its Black Sea perimeter stays in the country (besides sweetening the fiscal terms), but the operator of the largest offshore field OMV Petrom still thinks about whether to go ahead with the project.

The other operator, BSOG, is selling the gas to a trader - which can do whatever with it, according to the company’s CEO Mark Beacom quoted by Ziarul Financiar columnist Sorin Pislaru.

Given that “political factors” (as Reuters said) led to the termination of the Nabucco project that would have brought Azeri gas to Romania and other countries in the region, but the EU has constantly pressured Romania to make its gas available to the single market, the columnist wonders what is the country left to do to secure its gas supplies.

The selection of the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline in late 2013 left a bitter taste in Europeans’ mouths, a Reuters comment published in 2014 reads. The taste is even worse now.

TAP will bring Azeri gas to Italy, which already has fairly diverse energy sources, while Nabucco, even in its smaller version (known as Nabucco West), would have supplied gas to EU member states — notably Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania — largely dependent on Gazprom, the news agency explained at that time.

The first lesson of Nabucco’s failure is that Russia’s carrot-and-stick approach not only worked but also exposed the lack of a common EU energy policy.

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