Interim Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan said on Friday that delayed investments without a strategy led to major imbalances on the energy market, describing the situation as a 'combination of wrong decisions, changes of ministers, policies, incompetence and perhaps, at times, ill will.'

'Unfortunately, we are in a situation where, after years in which we failed to do what was needed in the energy sector, we are now receiving the bill for decisions that were not taken or for wrong decisions. And just a few months ago, even last year, when we were discussing the fact that we should have had much larger investments in energy, we were criticising the major state-owned companies because they were not making their investments, although they had investment budgets, carrying out only a third of them, we were discussing the bottlenecks we had and we restricted their access to our electricity networks through regulations. Instead of encouraging energy production combined with storage, we did not do this,' Bolojan said on RFI Romania.

He argued that delayed investments without a strategy led to the current situation of 'major imbalances on the energy market.'

'Do you remember the discussions related to the technical connection approvals, the fact that, in practice, we blocked our networks and the measures we have taken in recent months to eliminate speculation with these certificates. Thus, all these things, delayed investments without a strategy to be followed for years, have led us to a situation where we have major imbalances on the energy market, not necessarily an electricity shortage, but imbalances. We have very high production at midday, which we do not need and which we export, and we have an energy deficit in the evening hours, which we could have compensated relatively easily if we had had storage capacity,' Ilie Bolojan added.

In his view, a 'combination of several factors' led to this situation.

'For example, we committed to replacing coal-based production, which is inefficient in the current system, with gas-based production. We had five years available for this and, instead of replacing, for example, the Craiova power plant, we did not do it. Instead of replacing some of the coal-fired power plants in the Jiu Valley with gas, because we have all the systems in the area, we did not do this. Why? We developed oversized projects, we developed projects that, once put out to tender, received no bids, both as a result of flawed design that was not based on consumption levels and the assessment of prices that did not correspond to reality. We had policies that did not support, for example, storage. (...) So it was a combination of wrong decisions, changes of ministers, policies, incompetence and perhaps, at times, ill will,' Bolojan said.

According to him, responsibility lies with all former energy ministers, including those from the National Liberal Party (PNL).

'Everyone who has held positions of responsibility in the energy sector, beyond the good things they have done, bears responsibility for this situation. And I, as prime minister, for this year in which I have been in office, cannot avoid responsibility for the things that have not gone as well as they should have in Romania. So every minister, every company director and every person involved in the energy sector in a leadership position has a responsibility directly proportional to the position they have held. This is not about politics, it is simply a matter of managerial and administrative responsibility,' Bolojan said. AGERPRES (RO - writing by: Alina Novaceanu; EN - writing by: Rodica State)