Ionuţ PURICĂ

Saudi Arabia and Romania are similar in terms of having been at different times of their history very large suppliers of crude oil. This creates opportunities for extended cooperation between the two countries. At the same time there are complementarities that could strengthen especially the common activities related to new energy technologies penetration.
Historically, Romania is the first country in the World that, in 1857, had reported the extraction of 275 t of crude oil. This led to an accelerated development of the oil sector along with other economical sectors. Thus both in the first and in the second World Wars Romania was seen as a very important source of oil and of oil refinery products. Actually the first long range bombing action of the allied aviation, in 1943, was done on the oil fields and refineries of Ploieşti, with a view to hamper the production. Moreover, the long time use of oil and natural gas in Romania has lead to specific words in the common language that stem from this activity. One relevant example is the name of the cooking machine that in Romanian is ‘aragaz’. In English the dust aspirator is called ‘hoover’ coming from the name of the company that first launched it. In Romania, at the beginning of the XXth century the company that had launched the cooking machine based on natural gas was called ‘Asociaţia Româno Americană de Gaz’ i.e. the Romanian American Association for Gas – in short ARAGAZ.
The word became the common name for the cooking machine. One should mention that nowadays the Romanian oil reserves are depleting and an intense exploratory drilling activity is underway for new on-shore and off-shore oil deposits.
Saudi Arabia is now one of the most (if not the most) important oil suppliers for the entire World, having an undisputed domination for the second half of the XX-th century till these days. The evolution of the energy technologies in the World of today reached a critical point where new oil free energy generation is implemented and it is high time for Saudi Arabia as well as for Romania to take action in assessing and implementing the best such technologies for their countries.