Romanian Govt Control Body Checks All State Auth Related To Black Sea Lease

Romania's Government Control Body began to check, at the Government's General Secretariat, the Prime Minister's Chancellery and the ministries of Justice, Environment, Foreign Affairs, all the documents allowing Canada's Sterling Resources to extract crude oil and natural gas from the Black Sea.

"The checkup aims to verify the compliance with the legislation as regards this contract," Gelu Maracineanu, president of the Mineral Resources Agency ANRM, told MEDIAFAX on Tuesday.

The Government started Monday a control within the agency.

The checkups have been requested by Romania's Prime Minister Emil Boc, following the debate on the appendix signed between Sterling Resources and ANRM to a contract sealed in 1992 that allows the Canadian company to exploit the crude oil and natural gas reserves in blocks XIII Pelican and XV Midia in the Black Sea.

The lease in the Black Sea was granted by the Government in 1992 and was extended, successively, by all the country's governments, with the latest extension dating from November 12, 2008.

But the appendix of the oil-drilling contract closed between ANRM and Sterling Resources refers explicitly to the dispute between Romania and Ukraine, specifying that the exploration right will become an exploitation one after The Hague Court's decision.

The International Court of Justice at The Hague drew on February 3 a new maritime border between Romania and Ukraine, settling a 40-year-old dispute. The ruling gives Romania 9,700 square kilometers of exclusive economic zone, accounting for 79.34% of the 12,000 sq km disputed surface, an area said to include about 70 billion cubic meters of natural gas and 12 million tons of oil.

Mediafax