Government Approves Norms For Correspondence Voting
Romania’s government on Thursday approved enforcement norms to the correspondence voting law.
The law was passed last year and aims to ease the voting process for Romanians living abroad. (Puterea)
OMV Group To Focus On Russia And Iran After Its Profit Halved In 4Q/2015
Austrian OMV Group, which controls Romania’s largest company OMV Petrom, will be focusing on Iran and Russia, considering that the decline in oil prices affects the profitability of its costly exploitation in the North Sea.
OMV CEO Rainer Seele reiterated the intention to sell assets and said jobs may also be cut in the context of a decline in revenue by one third, to EUR5 billion.
Seele also said the planned asset-swap with Gazprom, which will enable OMV to access the production in the cost-efficient Urengoy field, should establish Russia as an additional core region by 2020. On the basis of current data, OMV will acquire additional reserves of approximately 600 million barrels of oil equivalent (boe), which is equivalent to more than five times the OMV production of the year 2015. (Adevarul)
Romgaz And Lukoil Plan To Forgo Black Sea Block Due To Poor Results Of Exploration Works
Romania’s largest natural gas producer Romgaz, along with its partners Lukoil and PanAtlantic Petroleum, plan to forgo the EX29 EST Rapsodia block in the Black Sea after their oil and gas exploration works failed to yield the results needed to continue the operations.
The company seeks to participate in exploration projects in European states and the Caspian Sea area, and is also interested in exploration blocks in the Romanian territory of the Black Sea.
“We are looking for smaller exploration projects, we want to participate in auctions here in Europe, we are looking everywhere, in Croatia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, all of them in offshore areas, but also in the countries from the Caspian Sea area. (…) We are interested in Black Sea blocks,” Romgaz sources told Mediafax. (Puterea)
Twelve People Died Of The Flu In February 8-14
Twelve more deaths were recorded in the period February 8-14 due to the flu virus, bringing the number of flu-related deaths to 21 in Romania.
Authorities said 19 of the deceased suffered from preexisting conditions and 18 were not vaccinated. (Adevarul)
Underprivileged Families To Get Vouchers To Send Children To Kindergarten
Every year, over 100,000 children of kindergarten age in Romania don’t attend kindergarten. Most of them live in rural areas and come from poor families.
Romania approved a law last year granting social assistance in the form of vouchers of 50 lei a month to poor families in exchange for sending their children to preschool.
The vouchers may be used to buy only food, hygiene, clothing items and school supplies. (Evenimentul Zilei)