Austria's president: Black Sea gas exploitation will hopefully calm the situation in Europe

The exploitation of the Black Sea natural gas through the Neptun Deep project will produce large-scale effects for Europe, Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen declared on Friday during a joint press conference with visiting President Nicusor Dan.

"Austria is very interested in the Romanian market, this is obvious, if not, we wouldn't be second in the ranking of investors in Romania. We want to continue this trend for various reasons. It is by no coincidence that OMV is one of these investors and it contributes to the Romanian market together with Petrom. At the same time, this is a very interesting project for Romania - the exploitation of Black Sea offshore gas," the Austrian head of state said, agerpres reports.

According to Van der Bellen, "this project in the Black Sea will have large-scale effects, and will hopefully calm the situation in Europe".

President Nicusor Dan too stressed the importance of the project. "Regarding Neptun Deep, we, Europe, have an energy security issue and we discussed two things: first, how to better connect Europe both in terms of electricity and gas, and then how to better use the gas extracted from the Black Sea," the Romanian president said.