Virgil-Daniel Popescu on Creating Green Corridor via Georgia to Romania
The "Green Corridor" is a plan by the Romanian government to use an underwater cable to link offshore wind power plants of the Caspian and Black Seas via Georgia to Romania. The Minister of Energy of the country, Virgil-Daniel Popescu, told Trend exclusively during his visit to Azerbaijan.
According to the Minister, this project "will support the export of green energy from Romania to other European countries, especially now that there is a great demand for energy in Europe."
"This is a very interesting project between Azerbaijan, Romania and Georgia, in which many other countries want to participate," said Virgil-Daniel Popescu.
The Minister recalled that the discussion on the creation of a "Green Corridor" between the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea was underway earlier this year, during his visit to Azerbaijan.
According to Popescu, in terms of security of supply to Europe, the Southern Gas Corridor is now more important than ever.
He said that "all eyes in Europe are now on Azerbaijan." In addition, Romania has started to extract gas in the Black Sea, which increases this volume by another 1 billion cubic meters.
However, the country still needs to import 2 billion cubic meters of natural gas for total consumption, so the government is looking for a solution, and Azerbaijani gas, according to Popescu, is one of the possible solutions.
"We want to import the remaining volume from Azerbaijan," the minister said.
According to Popescu, the Romanian side has developed a reverse extraction project from the Trans-Balkan gas pipeline. The modification for the reverse flow was completed last year, resulting in the creation of a corridor that allows gas to be exported and imported to Romania from Turkey, Bulgaria, and Ukraine. Romania can receive Azerbaijani gas via Turkey and liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals.
Romania will be able to access the Trans-Anatolian (TANAP) and Trans-Adriatic (TAP) gas pipelines via the Greek-Bulgarian Interconnector (IGB). Construction of this vertical corridor, which was supposed to be completed six years ago, will be completed this summer, in July. As for BRUA, it is the Bulgaria-Romania-Hungary-Austria pipeline, which is another corridor. Romania, as well as Moldova and other European countries, can receive gas from the southern and vertical corridors through the BRUA pipeline.
Popescu noted that Romania's share of total oil consumption is 70%, half of which belongs to Kazakhstan, and the rest comes from Russia. According to the Minister, Romania is also looking for an alternative to import this volume from other sources.
Source: BPN.ge