Romania Denies Reports of Moldovan Pipeline Delay
Romania’s Transgaz has insisted that the gas pipeline it is building to Moldova’s capital Chisinau is on track to start up early this year, denying recent reports of its delay until 2021.
Moldova buys all its gas from Russia, and is eager to diversify its supply. A pipeline between Iasi in Romania and Ungheni in Moldova was opened to great fanfare in August 2014, but remains empty, as there is no infrastructure to take the gas further into Moldova.
Transgaz is now extending the pipeline to Chisinau. But reports have circulated in the local press that the project is behind schedule, in part because of uncertainties about Romanian gas supplies.
“Work on the Ungheni-Chisinau pipeline is on schedule,” Transgaz said in a statement on January 15 responding to the reports. Its completion is still expected in the first half of 2020, it said.
Once completed, the pipeline will enable Romania to pump up to 2.2bn m3/yr of gas to Moldova, which consumed 2.9bn m3 of Russian gas in 2018. It takes gas from the Ukrainian pipeline system. Romania's upstream development work in the Black Sea is progressing slowly.