The explanation can therefore be a slowdown in the rest of the year, which the decline in electricity consumption indicates, too.
The very cold weather in January and February 2012, when temperatures went down to below 30 degrees Celsius in some places, drove gas consumption to an all-time high, making it difficult to keep all consumers supplied and requiring higher and higher imports. The gas consumption in the rest of the year was either the same as in 2011 or lower. The same goes for electricity.
The electricity, gas and fuel consumption trends provide an indication in real time of the performance of a specific economy and high consumption of such resources shows a busier industrial sector.
The officials of the national grid company Transelectrica have recently released information about a decline in electricity consumption even though the extreme temperatures last year were worse and more frequent than in 2011. They should have led to a higher power consumption compared with 2011 and if that did not happen, then Romania’s economy was flat in 2012.
Gas consumption reached 144.65 million MWh or 13.6 billion cubic meters last year, 4.08% lower than in 2011, according to Transgaz, the national gas transmission company. Out of this amount, almost 25% was imported from two sources.
One of the sources was Western Europe via Hungary through the Arad-Szeged pipeline, from which Romania got 5.24 million MWh or almost 500 million cubic meters.
The other is Gazprom, but Romania does not buy directly from it, using two intermediaries, which supply the bulk of the imported gas the country uses. The average price of Russian natural gas last year stood at $442 per thousand cubic meters, which means Romania paid $1.4 billion to Gazprom’s intermediaries.
Romania, however, is better off than most of the Eastern European countries in this regard, because its domestic production allows it keep the amount of Russian gas at about 21% of its consumption. Most of the other countries in the region are almost completely dependent on Russia for their gas needs. Poland, Czech Republic and Hungary import up to 80% of the gas they use every year, while Bulgaria, Slovakia and the Baltic countries are totally dependent on the supplier.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)