Representatives of Black Sea Oil and Gas (BSOG), which has been extracting natural gas from Romania's offshore perimeter Midia since mid-2022, met Government representatives to talk about solidarity contribution. The company reportedly seeks to be excepted from paying the solidarity contribution on the grounds that it started operations in 2022 and is already paying a tax on the windfall revenues, Spotmedia.ro reported.

BSOG claims that it paid over RON 2 bln (EUR 400 mln) to the state budget last year, in the account of the 60% tax on extraordinary income.

Asked whether BSOG requested a waiver, prime minister Nicolae Ciucă announced that he was going to have a meeting on Monday afternoon with the other leaders of the ruling coalition and with the company's representatives. But he said that, in principle, the fact that a company began operations during 2022 (and had no operations in the prior years( should not qualify it for a waiver on the solidarity contribution. 

BSOG is, most likely, subject to the solidarity contribution, while the country's largest oil and gas company (with diversified operations more recently) is, based on its own calculations, not supposed to pay the solidarity contribution.

It is hard to explain why a company that carries out similar operations – but supplementary, do other things that generate over 25% of its revenues should not pay the same taxes on the activity discussed (oil and gas extraction and refining). Hopefully, this is the question the European Commission is preparing to answer the Government of Romania, which asked for clarifications on whether OMV Petrom is or not subject to the solidarity contribution.

iulian@romania-insider.com

(Photo source: Ungureanu Vadim/Dreamstime.com)