OMV Petrom estimates that investments for 2017 will amount to 4.56 bn lei, up 83 pct from the 2.49 bn lei registered in 2016, the company said in a release. The Ordinary General Meeting of Shareholders approved the investment budget of OMV Petrom for this year, with the main investment focus staying on Upstream, for which investments of more than 4.15 bn lei have been budgeted (91 pct of the total), followed by Downstream Oil, with an investment budget of 323 million lei in 2017....more »

Austrian company OMV, the major shareholder of Petrom, sued the Romanian state in March 2017, at the International Court of Arbitration (an institution that is part of the International Chamber of Commerce - e.n.) in Paris, for breaching the provisions of the privatization contract regarding the recovery of environment investments, the oil company's report for 2016 reveals.  According to the privatization contract, the Romanian state committed to pay to OMV the amounts that this company would have invested in environmental works related to historical pollution, amounts that were estimated at 542 million euros.  ...more »

Renewable energy ensured last year 42.29 percent of the national production of electricity, the highest share being held by the hydro energy, a report of the National Regulatory Authority for Energy (ANRE) regarding the electricity market in 2016 reveals. Therefore, the hydro energy stood at 29.88 percent of the country's overall electric energy production, the wind energy was 11.07 percent, the photovoltaic energy 1.18 percent, and 0.16 percent was produced of biomass. The hydro energy represented the main source of producing energy on a national level, surpassing coal, that ensured 24.37 percent of the total. Nuclear sources represented 17.9 percent, gas contributed to 15.18 percent of the production and crude oil to 0.26 percent of the total....more »

Under a government resolution, power and heat producers and administrative - territorial units / intracommunity development units that produce electricity from renewable sources have a total of 100.6 million euro worth of state aid allocated for the next 4 years.  The implementation of the state aid scheme is aimed at increasing the use of less common energy sources by growing the share of renewable energy of the total primary energy consumption and cutting carbon emissions by partly replacing fossil fuels (coal and gas), the government said in a release.  The carrying out of these projects is intended to increase the installed biomass, biogas and geothermal power and heat capacity by 60 MW....more »

The main amendments brought by EGO will be the elimination of validity period of only 12 months for the green certificates. Basically, these will be valid for the entire period of the support scheme operation, until 2032. The mandatory qu...more »

The liberalization of Romania's domestic gas market will come into effect on April 1, according to the Government's Emergency Ordinance No. 64/2016, as there are no technical arguments for the move to be postponed once again, declares the Energy Ministry in a press release. According to the release, following the parliamentary debate on the gas market liberalization beginning April 1, 2017 as per OUG No. 64/2016, but also following the note of the Lower House Committee on Services and Industries regarding the postponement of the liberalization's coming in force, the Energy Ministry had several discussions with the Government, Parliament and the European Commission....more »

The Association of Electricity Suppliers in Romania - AFEER expresses concern about the current situation on the energy market, namely the very large increases in electricity prices on the spot market exchange OPCOM. ...more »

The number of green certificates traded in January 2017 on the Green Certificates Centralized Market (PCCV) amounted to 6,371 units, a figure seven times bigger than that of the similar period last year, when 906 units were traded, according to data released by OPCOM, Romania's electricity and natural gas market operator.  In January, 56 sales offers and seven buying offers were launched, at a price of 132.404 lei per certificate....more »

Largest oil and gas producer in South East Europe, OMV Petrom together with Romania's largest energy distributor Electrica inaugurated yesterday the first out of six pilot fast charging stations dedicated to electric cars. ...more »

Martin Zmelik, CEO CEZ Romania unveils the approach to energy efficiency and the challenges of a liberalized market What are in your opinion the main current challenges in implementing the efficiency programs in Romania? For us, the main challenges in implementing the efficiency programs were related mainly to the legislation provisions: on one hand we were pending on them, on the other we had to explain them to our potential partners.  But we surpassed the challenge and managed to perform in this area also. Our commitment for a long-term partnership to the municipalities took the shape of ESCO services resulting in public lightning cost optimization, energetic audit and management for long term sustainable savings....more »