Earlier this week, natural gas suppliers have halted the deliveries of this resource needed for providing district heating services in the city of Timisoara. Namely, the district heating provider Colterm has entered insolvency and is unable to pay its debts for already supplied gas.
Romanian Minister of Energy Virgil Popescu said that the Ministry found the short-term fix for the problem. Mayor of Timisoara, Dominic Fritz confirmed that a gas supplier would deliver natural gas to Colterm at the minimum necessary rate such as to help it burn the coal that the company has in its inventory. However, this will last only for about a week, as long as Colterm has coal in the stock.
In the meantime, E.ON said that it is ready to supply natural gas to hospitals directly so that they can have heating. At the moment, Colterm owes some 14 million euros to E.ON, most of which was accumulated in the past few months when the gas has been delivered under short- term arrangements.