Virgil Popescu tells the Romanians very clearly when the prices for natural gas in Romania will drop, an extremely serious problem that affects many Romanians, stating that at this moment the prices on the market are unjustifiably high, being manipulated for political purposes.
Virgil Popescu nevertheless states that as long as the war in Ukraine continues, and Romania will not have alternative or internal resources to generate a surplus, it is extremely difficult to believe that the price will decrease, something the minister has been saying for some time however.
"As long as we continue to be dependent on gas from the Russian Federation, the price of gas, which we saw starting with the second part of last year, began to rise suddenly, without any justification whatsoever, practically manipulated by reducing the supply, until after that, the addition of some gas quantities was refused.
All in the conditions in which this happened years ago, and it is obvious that if we stay, we will have a dependency, prices will not decrease. We will depend on the games played by those who dictate the Russian gas. If Romania and Europe will be supplied mostly, and significantly mostly, with gas from sources other than Russian, then obviously the market will stabilize.
Prices will go down from that point, that's normal, I'm still saying that we have a very high price for gas that is unjustified. Has the cost of gas exploitation somehow increased? Has it somehow increased... does it cost more to extract gas from Russian land compared to last year? No.. so they are simply games to reduce the offer, from market games this price ended up being very high.
It is now held there. As long as we have this conflict in Ukraine, I don't think we will witness a drop in prices. We have a conflict, it is clear, there is a spectrum, if we talk about the phase out of Russian oil, we are talking about natural gas, and all the time when there is such uncertainty, we will not witness price drops.
As long as there is a war, I don't think we will witness a drop in prices, but if we have enough liquefied gas, and we don't depend on the one from the Russian Federation, the price will surely drop, because it is no longer possible to play with gas as a political weapon, it is obvious."
