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The Republic of Moldova cannot terminate, at this moment, the contract for the supply of natural gas with Gazprom, which is used to ensure energy in Transnistria, in order to avoid a humanitarian crisis in that separatist region, Energy minister Victor Parlicov said in an interview with AGERPRES on Wednesday.
"Most of the electricity today, on the right bank (of the Dniester, ed. n.), we consume it coming from the thermal-electric power plant in the Transnistrian region. The second largest producer are the local sources, district heating power plants, which also provide central heating systems in the largest cities, in co-generation. Besides this, we have some of the renewable energy and a little bit of three percent of the electricity that we buy from Romania," says the Moldovan minister of Energy.
Minister Parlicov says in the interview with AGERPRES that Gazprom keeps a rather important role in providing gas especially to the region on the left bank of the Dniester, Transnistria. and that he does it de facto for free, which no one is able to do, today. Which, he says, "allows, on the one hand, to maintain a social stability on the left bank of the Dniester, not to find ourselves there with a huge crisis, including a humanitarian crisis, and, on the other hand, this indirectly influences the electricity market in the Republic of Moldova, because most of the electricity we consume here, on the right bank of the Dniester, it originates, it is produced at a heating plant in the Transnistrian region, from the gas delivered de facto free of charge. Because of this, at the moment, there is no question of terminating the contract with Gazprom."
Parlicov also says that "People began to save on gas more for financial reasons, because the family budget did not last."
Minister Parlicov adds that Moldova has thought to obtain energy from renewable sources, with investments from private funds.
"We are talking about 100 MW of wind energy and about 50 MW of solar energy, at this stage. If everything goes according to the schedule, I think that in the fourth quarter of this year a contest will be launched and next year we could see the first results."
With Romania, Moldova has several energy projects.
"The best known would probably be the Balti- Suceava project, a Balti-Suceava high voltage interconnection lines. In this respect, a part of the money that was originally invested for the construction of the back-to-back station at Vulcanesti was re-allocated. With the synchronization of the systems between the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine with ENTSO-E, the need to have a station there has become obsolete and, respectively, the money was re-allocated through the Inter-Ministerial Council of the Republic of Moldova to the construction of the Balti- Suceava line. In this respect, steps have already been taken by the Ministry of Finance to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. We are going to have a discussion with the Romanian side as well regarding the coordination, synchronization of the construction processes and the connection of these lines, but I am very optimistic about this project."
In addition, several projects on the energy dimension are taken into account, one of them being another inter-connection in the Iasi- Ungheni area, from lines of 220 KV passing to 330 KV on the territory of the Republic of Moldova and the connection to the station in Straseni, near Chisinau. And anyway it has a direct connection with the Isaccea- Vulcanesti inter-connection, the construction of the Vulcanesti- Chisinau power line Yes, it is not an inter-connection, strictly speaking, but it would allow a much better operation of the Vulcanesti- Isaccea power line.
