PSD’s changes to Offshore Law reverted to specialized committees of the Chamber of Deputies. Finance Minister: The solution has to work ways

The Social Democratic Party (PSD) was defeated in its attempt to amend the Offshore Law and did not receive the final vote from the Chamber of Deputies. At the proposal of the UDMR, the draft law was referred back to the specialized committees for new debates.

The PSD does not have the necessary majority to pass the law, because coalition partner ALDE does not support its amendments to the Offshore Law. The request for the referral to committees was adopted with 210 votes in favor and one abstention.

During the debates in the Parliament, Finance Minister Eugen Teodorovici said that the commissions will take another look at the amounts collected by local authorities from the offshore tax.

The changes the PSD had tried to impose would have significantly increased the tax burden of oil companies who want to extract natural gas from the Black Sea.

“Romania gains something only if the investments are made. The optimum gain should be determined calmly and transparently, based on an impact analysis made by ANRM and the Ministry of Finance,” said Razvan Nicolescu, senior expert at Deloitte.

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Two weeks ago, PSD had accepted in the energy committee of the Parliament two key-changes to the offshore bill favoring major energy corporations investing in Black Sea offshore gas fields, but it changed its mind a few days ago.

“Tax stability is completely removed, which makes it impossible to make final investment decisions,” offshore concessionaires association ARCOMN said in a press release.