Bucharest Mayor Sorin Oprescu said that the Municipality cannot indefinitely bear the consequences of the faulty management of ELCEN and added that the move of Distrigaz Sud Retele to reduce natural gas pressure had been ‘forced’.
‘I think the move made by Distrigaz Sud Retele was forced. We are in election campaign for the election of the president. Distrigaz’ action is forced by various interests, I don’t want to nominate, but one can feel a liberal wind both in the refusal of the ’NL-PDL councilors to vote for the decision on the merger of RADET and ELCEN last week and in the decisions of the people from GDF Suez who, instead of sitting down to talk about it, went on straight to reducing the pressure of the natural gas’, Oprescu said, according to Agerpres. According to the mayor, Distrigaz Sud Retele has not informed on its decision before actually reducing gas pressure, while such decisions endanger the safety of the public.
Oprescu said he was having talks with ‘the relevant institutions’ to make sure that the Bucharest residents who did not receive hot water for several days would not pay for it as if they had benefited from hot water. Affected were the residents of Sectors 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 who stopped receiving hot water since 2nd October. E;LCEN, the supplier of the District Heating Operator RADET explained that hot water was no longer delivered at usual temperatures because the quantity of gas received from Distrigaz had reduced. RADET announced on its website on Saturday that it had to reduce hot water temperature in Sector 2, 3, 4 and 5 following the reduction of the pressure and amount of natural gas supplied by ELCEN.
On the other hand, Oprescu said the Municipality had enough money to compensate district heating price until the end of the year ‘and after that’. The current gigacalory price in Bucharest is RON 341. The population pays about 170 RON and the Municipality subsidizes over 50 per cent of the price – RON 171.16 – from the local budget.
