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Basescu puts Nabucco Agreement, Romania-EU Additional Memorandum of Understanding to Parliament's ratification
President Traian Basescu on Tuesday signed a decree putting the Agreement for the support of Nabucco project to the ratification by the Romanian Parliament.
Basescu signed the decree for sending to the Parliament's ratification the Support Agreement of the Project between Romania and Nabucco Gas Pipeline International GMBH and Nabucco Gas Pipeline Romania SRL regarding the Nabucco pipeline system signed in Kayseri on June 8, 2011, the President's Office announced.
The Romanian head of state also signed a decree putting to Parliament's ratification the First Additional Memorandum of Understanding between the European Union and Romania signed in Bucharest, on Dec. 14, 2011 and in Brussels on Dec. 27, 2011 and the Second Additional Memorandum of Understanding between the European Union and Romania signed in Bucharest on this June 22 and in Brussels on June 29.
Basescu also promulgated a Law approving the Government's Urgent Ordinance no. 3 from 2012 on several measures aimed to organise and conduct the local elections held in this June.
The Romanian Government, on Sept. 19, passed a bill ratifying the Nabucco Project Support Agreement, thus meeting the internal procedural requirements for the document to take effect.
Furthermore, by this bill on the ratification of the Agreement for the support of the project between Romania, Nabucco International Company and Nabucco National Company, the Economy Ministry is appointed as the body responsible for easing the information flow between Nabucco International Company and the Romanian authorities involved in resolving the issues relating the pipeline implementation.
The original Nabucco project called for building a 4,000-kilometre-long pipeline to allow carrying natural gas from the Caspian region to Europe and curbing dependency on Russian imports. Nabucco West is a short version of the original project, which calls for building a pipeline to link Austria to the border between Turkey and Bulgaria.
In this June, the consortium developing the deposit, Shah Deniz, selected Nabucco West as the only option for the possible shipment of natural gas produced by Shah Deniz towards Central Europe; a final decision regarding the shipment route is expected in 2013.
Nabucco Project is being developed by Nabucco Gas Pipeline International consortium made up of companies Transgaz based in Medias (Romania), OMV (Austria), MOL (Hungary), Bulgargaz (Bulgaria), Botas (Turkey) and RWE (Germany).
The bill on the ratification of the First Additional Memorandum of Understanding between the EU and Romania updates the specific economic policy criteria agreed upon by the two sides and it will lead to fiscal strengthening, to re-directing the public capital expenditure in view of gradually switching from the investments that are fully financed by national sources to investments co-funded by the European funds.