Moldova facing dark winter as energy crisis bites

A silence hangs over Ion Ignat's normally noisy factory in Chetrosu, Moldova, with his 50 workers fretting about their future.

"Normally, all the machines are running. Now all is dead silent," said the owner of the plant that makes bricks and concrete products about a half an hour's drive from the capital Chisinau.

The 60-year-old decided to halt production early last month for the first time since 1992 when spiralling energy prices made it too expensive to fire the kilns and run the machinery. Ignat hopes to restart production soon if oil and gas prices fall.

In the meantime like many others in this impoverished nation nestled between Romania and Ukraine, he is preparing for a hard winter.

Faced with being starved of the Russian gas it has depended on for decades, the coming months will be crucial for this country of 2.6 million people with a Soviet past and European ambitions.

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen will visit later this week to discuss how the bloc can help Moldova, which became an EU candidate in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Its pro-European and Harvard-educated president, Maia Sandu, has warned her country risks running out of gas and electricity this winter, with gas prices rising 600 percent in the last year.

"It's a daily challenge to supply the country with energy. A family is paying 70 to 75 percent of its incomes on (gas and electricity) bills," President Sandu said in a recent address to parliament in neighbouring Romania.

Moldova-where inflation was 33.9 percent year-on-year in September-is almost entirely dependent on Russian gas.

But Russian energy giant Gazprom is reducing deliveries by half in November, according to Chisinau.

As for electricity, Ukraine used to supply 30 percent of its needs. But Russian strikes on energy infrastructure there led to Kyiv to stop all exports to Moldova.