Romania Will Become a Knot in the European Power Grid

Romania needs to invest tens of billion of euros in the energy sector, in the following 20 years, in order to comply with its obligations according to the negotiations with the European Union.

Interconnecting the Romanian electrical power grid with the West European grids will cost over 1.7 billion euros.
Dan Ioan Popescu, minister for the economy and commerce, says the effort will be made by the entire economy: "as the process of integrating our economy with the EU implies first and foremost to perform according to EU standards."

"Interconnecting the national power grid with the one of the EU is a true challenge for our operators," says Popescu. The challenge translates as follows, at corporate level:
Transelectrica is the company in charge with the transportation grid and a member of the European coordinating body, the Union for the Coordination of the Energy Transportation (UCET). Closing the 14 Chapter of negotiations for EU accession, the one regulating the energy, would not have been possible had Transelectrica not become a member of this European body, and 150 million euros in investments were needed in order to bring the Romanian company in line with requirements for this membership.

Other hundreds of million euros worth of investment are due for the electrical power transportation grid linking the Romanian cities Arad and Oradea, with the Hungarian ones, Szeged and Nadab-Beckescsaba, respectively.
The connection via Hungary is one of the most important ones to the West. The total investment Transelectrica needs by 2007 goes to 450 million euros. Then, Romania’s energy market should be open for free competition.

Transgaz company is the Transelectrica counterpart for the transportation of natural gas via pipelines. One project involving this company is to expand the transnational transportation pipeline network liking Ukraine and Bulgaria, via a pipeline going through the Dobrogea region. This project is still waiting the results of the feasibility study in order to proceed. Another large scale project is the one called Nabucco, for the transportation of natural gas from Turkey to Central Europe.

Popescu says that Romania must support the costs of these projects as "it needs the technology allowing it to safely produce clean energy, so that a strong industrial development would occur in the following 20 years."