An Overview of the Gas Market in Romania in the Context of the Liberalization Process

Romania has the largest natural gas market in Central Europe, and it is known as the first country to use natural gas for industrial purposes. The natural gas market reached high records in the early 1980s because of the implementation of government policies aimed at removing import dependence. The enforcement of these policies led to an intensive exploitation of domestic resources, resulting in a decline in domestic production. In the context of radical structural and institutional reforms that characterized the Romanian economy after 1989 and aimed at decentralizing services to increase their quality and efficiency, the Romanian energy market was gradually opened to competition, as an integral part of the concept of liberalization of the national economy and free movement of goods and services. In this paper, the authors are making an analysis of the gas market in Romania, from the perspective of the liberalization process.