Bucharest, February 14, 2025 – RBJ – Representatives of the Romanian Government visited the Transocean Barents platform on Friday, which will drill for a year and a half for the wells that will extract natural gas, starting in 2027.
The visit from the Transocean Barents offshore mobile drilling unit, “petaled” by the 160 workers on the “Mighty Barents” platform, was announced by the Minister of Energy on Friday, on his Facebook account.
“Today on the Neptun Deep platform, for an energy-independent Romania. Today, I visited the Transocean Barents platform in the Port of Constanta, a technological marvel that Romania relies on in the process of extracting gas from the Black Sea, through the Neptun Deep project, Romania’s most important energy project after the completion of reactors 1 and 2 at Cernavoda in the period 1990-2000”, wrote Sebastian Burduja, the Minister of Energy.
The Neptun Deep project is being developed by OMV Petrom and Romgaz (through its subsidiary Romgaz Black Sea Limited), each company having a 50% participation share in the project. The investments required for the development phase total up to 4 billion euros. Total production from Neptun Deep is estimated at approximately 100 billion cubic meters of natural gas.
“Mighty Barents” is in the Port of Constanta, where it arrived in November, after an 18-day journey in which it also recorded a world premiere: passing under the bridges of the Bosphorus.
According to the Minister of Energy, the American platform is ready to go offshore and start drilling. It will reach approximately 160 kilometers from the coast, near the town of Tuzla, where it will put into operation 10 wells for the exploitation of Romanian gas, at depths of over 4,000 meters. The first drilling will be carried out this year, and production will begin in 2027.
“Transocean Barents is a colossus that words can hardly describe, and images are not enough either. It is 90 meters high and 120 meters long, a complex assembly of machinery and equipment that will extract the gas, at very high pressures, and from 2027 — or maybe even sooner — it will reach our homes, through the Tuzla-Podișor mainline, which is also being worked on at an accelerated pace through the efforts of Transgaz,” said Sebastian Burduja.
“The Neptun Deep project has already exceeded a 33% execution schedule, ahead of schedule. And it will be completed by Romania, as we assumed from the very beginning. Those who do not want Romania to be energy independent will not stop us. Romanian gas in our homes and in our country’s economy will bring security and lower prices. For all this, I thank all those who made and are making this dream possible,” the minister concluded.
“Neptun Deep has economic and geostrategic importance – let’s not shy away from calling things by their real names. The EUR 4 billion investment, in the Romgaz-OMV Petrom partnership, will bring over EUR 20 billion to the state budget and over 100 billion normal cubic meters, doubling Romania’s production. We will be, indisputably, the largest gas producer in the EU,” the dignitary wrote.
