The Minister of Energy speaks for the millions of Romanians throughout the country about the natural gas reservoirs that Romania currently has, and this is because we are talking about a degree of filling of 59.48%, or 1.823 billion cubic meters of gas, and it will reach 80% in the fall.
The Minister of Energy also stated that there is no reason for Romania to reduce the consumption of natural gas by 15% in winter, as requested by the European Commission, and finally he talks about overtaxing the profit made by the companies that provide services in the field of energy now in Romania.
"The degree of filling of our deposits exceeded 59%, we are at 59,48%, i.e. one billion 823 million cubic meters of natural gas. In the same regulation it says that there are some degrees of flexibility, that is, if the interim targets are exceeded, our interim target on August 1 was 46%, the difference is subtracted from a possible reduction.
It is also subtracted from a possible reduction, the amount of natural gas related to non-energy customers at the level of 2021. We do not see at this moment why we should have a reduction, as it is a voluntary reduction. This plan is being worked on . We are still waiting for the calculation method from the European Commission, because it was not specified in the regulation.
It remains that in two to three weeks, the European Commission sends the member states the way to calculate this reduction. When we also have the calculation module, we work in parallel, we are in permanent contact with the representative office in Brussels, with our energy attachés and with those from DG-Energy and we work together.
Surtaxing of profits is not in the scope of activity of the Ministry of Energy. Duties and taxes are under the purview of another ministry. We do not overlap our skills. We wouldn't even have anything to do. In fact, I think that today in the government meeting you saw, the prime minister asked the Competition Council, ANR, the Ministry of Energy, ANAF to look at the next day's market if there are speculative transactions regarding the price of energy.
Absolutely all payments that have come from the regulator are paid or are in the payment circuit because they are verified by the regulator. We estimate that we will close on the compensation scheme in November, December, January, February, so basically on the first compensation scheme, around two and a half billion, three billion, under the budget that we estimated. All this money practically came from the additional dividend of Hidroelectricia."
