Amid a growing climate mess, a dash for Black Sea fossil gas

It’s been eleven straight months of unprecedented global temperatures. Over the past few months alone, a record heatwave baked much of Asia and extreme heat scorched the Sahel – both events revealing clear climate fingerprints. 

At the same time, plans for massive new offshore gas production in Romania and Bulgaria have been advancing unabated. If these plans materialise, they’re likely to derail the energy transition in both countries, undermining EU efforts to tackle the climate crisis. 

In Bulgaria, OMV Petrom, the Romanian subsidiary of Austrian fossil energy giant OMV, is seeking to resume exploration at the Han Asparuh offshore gas field. The project could pump 13 billion cubic metres (bcm) of fossil gas a year between 2030 and 2040, and 8 bcm a year by 2050. But the company would first need to register a discovery before its license, first granted in 2012, expires at the end of the year. 

Since TotalEnergies withdrew from the project earlier this year, following Repsol’s exit four years earlier, OMV Petrom is currently the project’s only stakeholder. As Bankwatch previously revealed, the Bulgarian government has been actively seeking to acquire its own stake, but thus far without success. 

Meanwhile, eager to push the gas project forward, Bulgarian authorities appear to be cutting corners. According to a recent report, plans are underway to ‘unite exploration and production licenses under one agreement’ in a bid to shorten the period between exploration and production. There are also plans to reduce the time it takes to carry out and appeal environmental impact assessments. 

At the adjacent Neptun Deep field, also located in Romanian waters, OMV Petrom, together with Romanian state-owned company Romgaz, could begin drilling for gas even earlier. Set to officially start production in 2027, the project would see 100 bcm of fossil gas extracted over the next two decades. This would make Romania the EU’s biggest fossil gas producer. At a time when the country – and the EU as a whole – need to slash fossil gas use, Romania’s transmission system operator expects domestic gas consumption to grow significantly. 

According to Romania’s energy minister, an agreement reached by the Council of the European Union in March urging EU Member States to continue coordinated demand-reduction measures until April 2025 is ‘more of a recommendation’. He confirmed Bucharest is intent on increasing fossil gas consumption, and to ensure demand grows, the Romanian authorities are now busy building new gas infrastructure, from power plants to distribution systems. 

Although OMV Petrom is still awaiting a crucial environmental permit from the relevant authorities to go ahead with Neptun Deep, which could be issued any day, the future of both the Romanian and Bulgarian fossil gas projects remains uncertain. In Bulgaria, where fossil gas consumption is currently 3 bcm a year, any new fossil gas production would require a substantial increase in either domestic gas consumption or exports.  

Yet, there is little appetite in Europe for long-term gas import deals beyond 2035. In fact, if the EU fully implements REPowerEU, its strategy aimed at weaning Europe off Russian gas imports, overall gas demand should halve by 2030. Therefore, given the estimated EUR 4 billion investment in each project, both of these ventures pose not only major climate risks but also economic risks due to the likely insufficient demand for all the gas produced. 

Environmental impact 

In mid-May, the Bulgarian environment ministry held transboundary public consultations over the Neptun Deep project. Local community members, representatives of non-governmental organisations, and officials from both countries were invited to the coastal town of Kavarna to discuss the implications of the offshore gas project. Yet, the discussion was mostly dominated by OMV Petrom representatives, with little intervention from local authorities. Civil society members, including Bankwatch, raised concerns about the project’s climate impact, the use of toxic chemicals, and the risk of accidents. But these concerns were largely brushed off by OMV Petrom representatives, who claim Neptun Deep will have no significant transboundary impacts. For their part, the Bulgarian authorities also expressed their agreement with the proposed measures.  

Yet, both Han Asparuh and Neptun Deep pose direct threats to EU climate action. The environmental impact assessment for Neptun Deep makes the ludicrous claim that fossil gas drilling would generate ‘negative emissions’. However, this claim is based on the assumption that the gas extracted would replace coal in energy production, and that Romania’s operating coal capacity is three times higher than it actually is. 

In reality, Neptun Deep’s climate footprint over its projected 20-year lifespan, including its associated pipeline infrastructure, could reach a staggering 209 million to 227 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e), primarily from gas combustion. This equates to around 10 million tCO2e per year, surpassing Romania’s current annual coal industry emissions (8.6 metric tonnes in 2022, and decreasing). These findings, taken from a recent report commissioned by Greenpeace Romania, raise serious concerns about the validity of the predicted Neptun Deep figures.  

For several years now, civil society have been sounding the alarm over the two projects, their climate price tag and the toll they would take on marine wildlife. In Romania, since the offshore law enabling the Neptun Deep investments was approved in 2022, environmental groups have sent open letters to the Romanian parliament, and warned on multiple occasions  of the project.  

In late March, Greenpeace activists staged a direct action outside OMV Petrom’s headquarters demanding the cancellation of Neptun Deep. A month earlier, Greenpeace filed a lawsuit against the companies behind Neptun Deep and the local environmental protection agency that had approved the project’s onshore infrastructure for failing to assess the full scale of its environmental ramifications. 

And it’s not only activists and non-governmental organisations. Three years ago this month, the International Energy Agency warned that, if the world is to reach net zero emissions by mid-century, there can be no more new oil and fossil gas exploration and production. Failing to do so vastly increases the chances of a full-blown climate chaos. And in a recent report, the OECD concluded that Romania should not approve new oil and gas explorations, since falling gas demand in Europe after 2030 might pose a financial risk for new projects (see page 108). Yet, policymakers in Romania and Bulgaria, much like the profit-driven fossil fuel industry, are evidently looking the other way.

European greenlight  

If realised, the Neptun Deep and Han Asparuh projects would cement both Romania’s and Bulgaria’s dependence on fossil fuels for far longer than the world can afford. While the Romanian government intends to use most of the Neptun Deep gas domestically, there are plans to export Black Sea fossil gas to neighbouring countries, most likely to Hungary and Austria. Under the pretext of energy security, gas exports could mean entrenching the dependence on dirty, expensive fossil gas throughout the region. 

To make matters worse, Neptun Deep is being enabled by EU money. While the drilling itself might not be directly in receipt of EU funding, the supporting infrastructure – namely, the pipeline connecting the rig to the national grid, without which the project cannot function – has already received over EUR 230 million via the EU’s Modernisation Fund and the European Investment Bank. 

EU leaders have repeatedly been speaking of the need for the world to end fossil fuel subsidies. This was also one of the EU’s priorities for the UN climate summit in Dubai in November 2023. A month earlier, however, the then Hungarian President Katalin Novak reiterated Budapest’s intentions to buy fossil gas from Neptun Deep and called on the EU to finance it. 

Sinking public money into any fossil fuel project is effectively stabbing the European Green Deal in the back. EU politicians and institutions should not endorse either Neptun Deep or Han Asparuh. Instead, they should call these projects out for what they really are: climate wrecking balls. 

For now, the important decisions are set to be taken at the national level. Both the Romanian and Bulgarian governments need to acknowledge that pumping more fossil gas runs completely counter to the public interest and to immediately withdraw support for these planet-heating follies. In tandem, decision makers must prioritise sustainable energy for their citizens by investing in electricity grids, renewables, and energy efficiency.