The natural gas trading company WIEE Romania, a joint venture between Russian-based Gazprom and Wintershall with revenues of nearly €400 million in Romania, expects the natural gas demand to weaken further, which would weighs on the imported natural gas business.

“The general demand was very weak in the first half of 2009, due to the ongoing economic crisis. In 2009 the quantities will drop compared to the previous year. The reduction in gas consumption in Romania was transferred almost integrally to imported gas. As WIEE Romania deals mostly with such imported gas we expect that our sales will decrease, we expect the sales for the remainder of the year to continue to be sluggish”, Serban Stanescu (photo), managing director of WIEE Romania said.

Natural gas consumption fell 30% in the nine months through September this year, the reduction being transferred mostly to imported gas, and the Russian gas too, which accounts for a third of the internal demand. The company didn’t disclose further details.

The solutions to crisis adopted by WIEE Romania so far, such as gas storage with injection in summer, extraction in winter and also flexible pricing agreements couldn’t compensate the falling consumption level, Stanescu added.

“WIEE Romania has implemented a risk management system and is thus in position to appropriately overcome future challenges”, the head of the natural gas trading company pointed out.

After a strong increase in gas prices at the beginning of the year, consumption fell weighed down by a deepening economic crisis, and the main challenge of the power industry being to ensure security of supply for the country for the winter season.

“Gas is generally short and a transit crisis like we have seen in January 2009 can not be categorically excluded in the future. Nevertheless due to its significant domestic production backed