"On a scale of one to ten, I would put this year's chances of Europe going through another gas crisis at two," says Edward Chow, energy expert with the Centre for International Strategic Studies in Washington.

Early last week, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin sent a message to the EU telling it to give Ukraine money to pay for the gas, warning about the risks that might arise unless the authorities in Kiev paid what they owed to Moscow. There are less than two months left until January 1, 2010, exactly one year from the moment when the Russians decided to cut the gas supply to Ukraine and to many European states as a result.

What are the chances of history repeating this year and how ready is Romania to cope with the cold weather on its own?

"Gazprom can no longer afford to do such a thing. They are in a very difficult position considering they have tens of billions of dollars in loans to repay and the gas crisis this winter caused them to lose even more billions of dollars, which they will never get back. Theoretically and logically, this is how things should be. On the other hand, the problem with Ukraine is still there. It was never solved. If they want to, they can start the crisis at any moment," Chow explained ZF. He was in Romania for a conference organised by Forum Invest.

According to players in the gas industry, Romania needs to play three cards to be able to not worry about a new gas crisis: the development of interconnection routes, the upgrade and increase in capacity of storage facilities and aligning the domestic production price to the import price, which would allow local companies to have more money to invest. The price for domestically produced gas is half the imported gas price.

"Interconnection and upgrades of the gas storage facilities are just some of the long-term solutions. Now, even though we have stored ga