Speaking at the Three Seas Initiative Summit in Bucharest, Romanian President Klaus Iohannis said that Romania has the potential to become a regional energy platform with an essential contribution to the energy security in the region and in Europe. He also pleaded for an operational and robust transatlantic relationship and said the US is directly interested in the regional interconnectivity projects.
Leaders form 12 countries in the Central and Eastern European region met at the summit in Bucharest to talk about common projects in the energy, transport and digital sectors. US Secretary of Energy Rick Perry is one of the special guests at this year’s summit and he had meetings with both the Romanian president Klaus Iohannis and Chamber of Deputies speaker Liviu Dragnea, the leader of the ruling party in Romania.
The main topic of these meetings is likely to be the offshore law, currently under debate in the Romanian Parliament, as US companies ExxonMobil and Carlyle have offshore gas operations in the Romanian Black Sea, which could be impacted by the new law. Iohannis and Dragnea have different views on the offshore law as the PSD leader wants to tax the investors more for the gas extracted from the Black Sea.
