The President of the Chamber of Deputies Industries Commission, Iulian Iancu, requested that ANRM and the Ministry of Finance present data on the leasing contract for the Black Sea resources, its undisclosed annexes, maps, and the report which formed the basis for the issuance of the Government Ordinance in November 2008, through which the Pelican and Midia perimeters were leased to the Sterling Resources company.
Iancu warned that, following the end of 2008 ordinance, the Romanian state stands to lose $55 billion. “We are taking about a potential of one billion cubic meters of gas in these perimeters,” Iancu said. He added that this decision by the government headed by Prime Minister Calin Popescu Tariceanu modifies a document which stipulated the sharing of natural gas production with Sterling Resources. “Consequently, the Romanian state is freely giving up its share of the obtained production. It could have given this share to Romgaz, for instance, which would have been the representative of the Romanian state in this contract,” the Deputy explained.
Mircea Geoana, leader of the Social Democratic Party (PSD), said that the government has the obligation to verify the contract immediately. The liberals say that the Black Sea leases were granted in 1992, and were successively extended by all the following governments.
