27. How Romania May Benefit from the Natural Gas Resources’ Offshore Exploitation of the Black Sea Romanian Continental Shelf?

The age of natural gas is not over, and it won’t be over any time soon. With significant reserves of natural gas, Romania can become an important player in this market, if it knows how to play this card. In this respect, Romania has an extraordinary chance that few countries in Europe have: its own natural gas resources and, above all, the significant deposits discovered in the Black Sea continental shelf. Therefore, these huge natural gas reserves call for important investments in the Black Sea in the coming years. For these reasons, the paper examines and analyzes both the natural gas resources and the great benefits these investments may induce in Romania. If the domestic consumption remains at the present level, Romania may be independent of Russian gas and even export up to a quarter of the gas production, and this represents the great opportunity given by such projects. In the article, this impact is quantified by analyzing the volume of investments, including capital and operational expenditures. In addition, employment, revenues to the state budget, and macroeconomic indicators have multiple impacts on the Romanian economy. Concerning the spillover effects in the economy of investments from the Black Sea, the paper demonstrates that the development of offshore natural gas projects from the Romanian continental shelf will create new opportunities for other Romanian industries as well, contributing to their return to the level of past achievements or the development of new products and services for the economy.