PM Ungureanu: Mining state-owned companies feed on state budget money

The state-owned companies in the mining segment are 'pumps sucking money out of the state budget,' Prime Minister Mihai Razvan Ungureanu told public radio station Radio Romania Actualitati on Thursday. 'There have been no company with public management over the past twenty years in the mining sector to generate profit. They are feeding on the state budget in order to stay alive, while taking the money out of the Romanian citizens' pockets and boosting prices as well in the process, if you want to judge by a speculative economy logic,' Ungureanu said.

He claimed that the economic growth and the creation of new jobs have been dragged behind by the subsidies granted to these companies. 'Little by little, the state deluded itself, feeding them funds, in fact keeping them at a subsistence level, providing the illusion of the possibility of a foreign investment, which failed to come up, but their privatization - which is fairly difficult anyhow - does not start today, it started a long time ago, during the governments of the nineties,' the prime minister told the radio station.

To exploit potential deposits of shale gas, Chevron will need further approvals

To exploit potential deposits of shale gas, Chevron Co. will need environmental approvals and other procedures involving governmental institutions, stressed, on Thursday, Prime Minister Mihai-Razvan Ungureanu, on Radio Romania Actualitati (RRA).

'When the operational phase starts, things change when we speak of environment approvals, a whole series of procedures engaging institutions that depend on the Executive. But until then, in economic terms, we speak about speculations, presumed amounts, presumed deposits', said the head of the Government.

He stressed that he cannot speak about the possibility of earthquakes triggering, in case the shale gas is exploited.'As for the earthquakes, I can not have a say, because it is not my profession', Ungureanu said on RRA.

In the context, the Premier emphasized that the agreements approved by the Government for Chevron Co. are oil ones and that, following the exploration phase it should be assessed what kind of oil fields are in that area, because it is not certain shale gas exists.

'What kind of exploitation and exploration agreement of shale gas you are talking about? I do not know of such an agreement. There is no shale gas phrase, nowhere. It is an oil agreement and we talk about an oil agreement. We do not talk about an exploitation agreement of some gas resources we know nothing about for the time being. And what happens there is simply an exploration. This exploration does nothing else than verifies partially, because it cannot be verified exhaustively until the moment there is literally a mapped deposit', Ungureanu underlined.

The Prime Minister explained that, in the exploration phase, no environmental approvals are necessary.
At the same time, the head of the Government said that the Barlad perimeter was leased in 2004, by the Government at that time.

'My feeling is we tend to avoid remembering that these things are by no means new. There is a Government Decision of December 9, 2004, that says a lease agreement is approved for PV 2 Barlad perimeter, for exploration, development and exploitation. All of them are called oil agreements, because gas may or may not accompany oil deposits. We further speak about oil agreements concluded between ANRM and Regal Petroleum ... So, they are not novelties', said Ungureanu.

The Prime Minister also said that, by the Law on oil automatic effect, the oil agreements with Chevron are classified, and for their declassification both the company and the Romanian state should give their accord. He added that these agreements are classified in order to protect certain commercial information, that keep to the 'need of protecting own investment'.

According to him, the classified information refer to how an eventual deposit can be exploited, the technology type, the manner in which the price of future products can be established.