Romania’s biggest energy company OMV Petrom must expand across borders to find new oil and gas reserves, Kazakhstan and Bulgaria being two of the potential targets for this expansion, Reiner Seele, the CEO of Austrian group OMV said in an interview with Hotnews.ro.
He also firmly rejected the rumors about a potential cooperation between Petrom and Russian group Gazprom, which resurfaced in some local media after the announcement about Mariana Gheorghe’s departure from the helm of OMV Petrom, says Romania-Insider.com.
“Talking about Romania and Petrom, we have no interest to cooperate with Gazprom in terms of shareholding or business operations. When we talked with Gazprom about the asset change with OMV there have been rumors in the Romanian media that Petrom may be included in our talks. I want to make it clear: we have never talked about a collaboration with Gazprom in Romania and we have no interest in doing this,” Seele said.
The OMV CEO also said that Petrom’s management is planning higher investments in Romania in 2018. This year, the group will also make its final decision on the commercial exploitation of the Neptun Deep gas perimeter in the Black Sea, which OMV Petrom had been developing together with U.S. group ExxonMobil.
“We have a very big gas reserve in the Black Sea Neptun project,” the OMV CEO said, adding that the volume of gas that won’t be absorbed by the Romanian market will be exported and that the project can’t be developed without exports.
“Neptun is clearly a project for gas exports. We will guarantee more than enough gas for Romanian clients.”
Seele also said that the BRUA gas pipe, which will connect Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Austria, is important for the Black Sea gas project as it will allow the gas exports to Western Europe.
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