The amendments to the Law on Natural Gas, that were adopted by the ruling coalition recently, will cause expenditure growth by minimum 200 million lei a year, Victor Parlicov, the former Head of the National Energy Regulatory Agency (ANRE), said at a news conference at Infotag in Thursday.     

He reminded that the Law was amended to harmonize Moldovan regulatory acts with European rules in the energy sphere.   

“In that Law, in particular, amendment authors modified Article 4 that stipulates services in transporting natural gas in a transit regime. As a result, gas transportation now excludes transit as a separate mode of fuel supply. In the European directives, there is no division into the notions of transportation and transit. In Europe, everything has been included into one notion – “transportation”. The European directives directly prohibit the discrimination of suppliers or consumers by dividing them into domestic and foreign consumers. But the parliamentary majority’s blind following the European requirements will soon lead to real problems in our relations with the Russian Gazprom Concern”, stated the former ANRE director.       

Victor Parlicov reminded that only 5% of the gas coming into the Moldovan territory is used for domestic needs, and all the rest – up to 20 billion cubic meters a year – is transited via Moldova over to Europe.

“If our legislation does not stipulates clearly what the regime of transit is as such, then our Russian partners have full right to begin asking us how we are going to further work with them. I really can’t see whatever sound arguments, which Chisinau could provide in reply. There are no such arguments! Moreover, I am sure that the transit tariff will soon go up manifold. For instance, now the tariff is 20 lei, but already very soon it may reach 200 lei. As a result, the overall expenditures of the MoldovaTransGaz daughter company may go up by 200 million lei. This will be an extra and very heavy burden on Moldovan consumers”, believes Victor Parlicov.        

In his words, the amendments were initiated by MP Simion Furdui of the Liberal Democratic Party, the ex-director of the Moldovagaz joint Moldo-Russian company.     

“Those amendments failed to receive the Government’s approval. But, strangely, governmental experts did not show up in parliament to attend the amendment voting, though the character of possible entailing problems is obvious. It is interesting that the need for introducing the “revolutionary Euro-integration amendments” were substantiated by Simion Furdui proceeding from the Agreement on Promoting a Coordinated Policy in the Natural Gas Supply Field signed in Moscow yet in 1995, when Moldova was fully in the CIS energy area”, said Parlicov.   

He believes that the Moldovan governmental officials’ attempts to reach accords with Gazprom, the only source for Moldova, will lead to problems with the European Union, which firmly curbs violations made by countries belonging to the united European energy community. For a failure to fulfill the EU directives, the European Union may well impose sanctions reaching 18,000 euros a day.    

“So, Moldova may one day find itself between hammer and anvil – all