Minister Varujan Vosganian was not interested by the WIEE representative, our main interloper of Russian natural gas.
Natural gas price for the next years is less important than the electoral campaign for the local elections. At least this is how Varujan Vosganian, the minister of economy and finances, is acting.
After he said that Romania is losing hundreds of millions of euro because of Gazprom's interlopers, Vosganian didn't came yesterday at the meeting with the Wintershall representatives, who, through the company WIEE, is the main interloper for the Russian natural gas.
The minister arrived in Giurgiu after the departure of Rainer Steele, member of the directing board of Wintersalle, present in Romania for the inauguration of natural gas distribution in this city. Even if he couldn't ask why are we paying the most expensive natural gas in Europe, the minister started an electoral demonstration, "flanked" by the yellow flags of PNL. The representatives of the German company were presented in the packed hall of the local theater "together" with PNL's candidate to the Giurgiu City Hall, the actual mayor Lucian Iliescu.
While the government representatives are managing the elections, the natural gas importers announced, yesterday, that they had last year bussines of 1 billion euro in Romania (Petrom, the largest company, has an affairs figure of 3.6 billions euro). Profitable natural gas
"I would like to correct the fact that we are interlopers of the Russian natural gas. Gazprom is a shareholder at WIEE, and we represent Gazprom's interests", said Steele.
Wintershall and Gazprom each own half of WIEE, which brought last year 4 billions cube meters of Russian natural gas, just under the Romgaz and Petrom production. The other interloper is Conef, which imported in 2007 around 550 millions cube meters, while Romanian consume is of 16 billions cube meters.
The extraction price of natural gas is 65 dollars/ 1.000 cube meters in Russia and it is sold in Romania with 370 dollars, Steele said that "the price is imposed by the market, not by production costs". He reminded that, in the background of the oil quotations growths, we must expect higher prices for natural gas in the next period. 1 billion euro was the affair figure of WIEE, in 2007, in Romania.