BUCHAREST (AFP)--Deliveries of Russian gas to Romania were still 30% short of the planned volume after Russian gas group OAO Gazprom (GAZP.RS) said it would reduce supplies, the company handling the flow of gas said on Monday.
"The fall of 30% in gas deliveries is continuing," the director of the gas transit company Transgaz, Ioan Rusu, told AFP.
The reduction, noticed since late Friday, was expected to continue until Jan. 11, he said, on the basis of information provided about the movement of gas to the Balkans by Gazprom.
"The contract foresees that the quantities of gas may vary, in the event of difficult weather conditions or technical problems, and it is quite possible that after Jan. 11 the deliveries will rise to compensate for the reduction noted during this period," Rusu said.
Before this problem, Romania imported about 10 million cubic meters of gas a day from Russia. It consumes about 58 million cubic meters of gas a day.
The country has 2.2 billion cubic meters of gas in storage and the authorities have given assurances that households won't be affected by the reduction of imported gas.
Meanwhile, many industrial users of gas are working at a reduced rate because orders have fallen owing to the economic slowdown.
As a precautionary measure, the oil company Petrom (SNP.RO), part of the OMV AG group, has decided to close the Doljchim chemical complex in Craiova in the south of the country, releasing 1.2 million cubic meters of gas a day.
Romania shares a frontier with Ukraine. On Jan. 1, Russia ceased supplying Ukraine with gas over a disagreement on the price for gas in 2009 and on back payments, and several countries have since noticed that supplies have been affected.
No comments:
Post a Comment