May 18 (SeeNews) - Romanian operator of underground natural gas storage facilities Depogaz said on Thursday that it has signed a 37.9 million euro ($41 million) grant agreement with the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA) to expand the daily extraction capacity within the Bilciuresti deposit.
The grant will facilitate the modernisation of the Bilciuresti deposit, in Dambovita county, by developing new surface facilities capable of taking in additional flow, as well as upgrading and completing existing installations, Depogaz said in a press release.
The project will increase the daily delivery capacity of natural gases from the Bilciuresti deposit by 42.9% to 20 million standard cu m per day, correlated with a storage capacity of 108 million standard cu m per cycle.
“It is essential that we increase the storage and extraction capacity in order to achieve our energy independence and security goal. At the same time, we are preparing for when we will extract gases from the Black Sea,” Romania’s energy minister, Virgil Popescu, said in a social media post announcing the grant agreement on Wednesday.
The total value of the investment directed at the Bilciuresti deposit amounts to 110.5 million euro.
In December 2022, the European Commission announced that it will grant Romania 38 million euro to expand the Bilciuresti deposit in order to help the country and the region reduce dependence on Russian gas imports during peak consumption in winter.
Depogaz, a fully-owned subsidiary of Romanian natural gas producer Romgaz [BSE:SNG], operates five underground storage facilities with a total active capacity of approximately 2.9 billion cu m of natural gas per cycle, representing around 90.5% of Romania’s total storage capacity. The Bilciuresti deposit is the largest of the five, with an active capacity of 1.3 billion cu m of natural gas per cycle.
Romgaz shares traded 0.13% lower at 39.6 lei on Thursday as at 1046 CET on the Bucharest Stock Exchange.
($=0.9235 euro)
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