Romania: Petrom Plans to Enter Shale Gas Market in 2021
Romania's Petrom will analyze the opportunity to enter this market after the year 2021 said Mariana Gheorghe, general manager of Petrom.
Gheorghe explained that the natural decrease of oil and gas production in Romania of 10% per year can be compensated in three ways. “First it’s about the increase of the degree of hydrocarbons recovery. Second, it’s about new explorations, including the ones of high depth. Third, shale gas gives the possibility of the industry to compensate for the decline and even to raise production.”
According to the Petrom GM, the company is not considering activities in the shale gas sector because it is employing the first two of the three methods of reduction of the decline, but is considering entering this market after 2021, when the current strategy of the group will expire.
“However, after 2021 we can take into account this part of the market, which is part of the 21st century. After America’s experience, all countries, including Romania, are turning their heads in this direction,” said Gheorghe.
This statement follows the statement made in May 2012 by Gergard Roiss, CEO of OMV Group, in which he said that OMV might be interested, in the medium-term, in shale gas exploration in Romania, but the main priority of the group is related to Black Sea deposits.
Currently the only company that has publicly expressed interest to explore and extract shale gas in Romania is Chevron. The American company has lease agreements for three perimeters in Constanta County and for one near Barlad.
Today Romania has reserves of 1.444 billion cubic meters (bcm) of shale gas, which places the country on the third place among European countries, after Poland and France, according to official data published on infogazedesist.eu, a website by the National Agency for Mineral Resources as part of an information and public debate campaign concerning shale gas.
Romania's yearly gas consumption is between 13 and 14 bcm, so estimated shale gas deposits would cover the country’s consumption for the next 100 years.
In the first quarter of this year, Petrom Group registered a net profit of 2.393 billion lei, 18% larger than last year, according to data published on Tuesday by the company.
According to geologist Octavian Coltoi, PhD, “If Petrom is focused on conventional resources and has made investments, it is normal not to invest in such a thing before some time. At the same time, they are making profits from current perimeters by subcontracting smaller companies. In short, they invest less but still make a profit. At the same time with the research works to increase the recovery percentage, for development and promoting different types of resources, this company is gathering useful information regarding unconventional deposits. When they will officially announce their interest for shale gas (because unofficially any oil company has a database that can be used at any time for any purpose, without asking for anyone’s permission). They will have enough information that will allow them good investments, the risk of a bad investment being very low.”
Silviu Molnar