A final investment decision on the long-delayed Neptun gas field offshore Romania is now set to be taken in the first quarter of 2022, a senior official at Austria's OMV said Feb. 4.
OMV -- through its Romanian subsidiary OMV Petrom -- has a 50% stake in Neptun, which is estimated to hold up to 84 Bcm of gas and is considered key to Romanian plans to become a more significant gas exporter.
The field was discovered in 2012, but its development has been on hold for a number of years after Romania implemented legislative changes considered unfavorable by the developers.
However, Romania has pledged to reform its offshore legislation with a new proposal due in the first quarter.
"The FID will be in the first quarter of 2022," OMV's upstream chief Johann Pleininger said during a call with reporters following the release of the company's Q4 results.
"What this means is that the offshore law will have to be passed in the first half of 2021 by the Romanian government," Pleininger said.
He added that first gas production from Neptun is now expected at the end of 2025.
ExxonMobil is the operator with the other 50%, but it has signaled it wants to sell out of the project.
Offshore law
Romania is currently in the process of amending the country's offshore law, with Dan Dragan, state secretary at the Romanian economy ministry, saying in November that Bucharest planned to present its new offshore gas legislative proposals for public consultation in the first quarter.
A number of operators offshore Romania have criticized the regulatory environment in the country after the government implemented new offshore legislation in late 2018.
Under the law, operators are required to sell 50% of their offshore gas output in a centralized marketplace, while a gas price cap and a 2% turnover tax on energy companies were also imposed.
Dragan said the new legislative process to update the offshore law would be "fully transparent."
"The aim is to eliminate a number of barriers and to unlock important investment in the Black Sea ," he said at the time.
Dragan said new companies were also showing an interest in exploration work offshore Romania and that he was confident that Romanian Black sea gas would be exported to the wider region in the future following the completion of the first phase of the BRUA gas pipeline.
The first phase of BRUA -- designed to carry Romanian gas to Hungary -- cost Eur500 million and has a capacity of 1.75 Bcm/year.
Romania's total gas output last year totaled 108 TWh (10.2 Bcm), according to data from Romanian energy regulator ANRE, with only negligible gas exports and imports from Russia to help meet demand.
