s been rising, in line with the
government's policy of conserving natural gas for use in the
petrochemical industry.

In 1971 construction was virtually completed of a huge hydroelectric
station at the Iron Gate on the Danube River, built jointly with
Yugoslavia and equipped, in part, with turbines made in the Soviet
Union. The station's twelve turbines have a total capacity of 2.1
million kilowatts and are planned to produce about 11 billion
kilowatt-hours of electricity per year. The output is to be evenly
divided between the two participating countries. Nine of the twelve
turbines were reported to have been in operation in September, and six
were reported to have been connected to the Romanian national power grid
in November. Completion of the Romanian portion of the project almost
doubled the country's hydroelectric capacity and increased its power
output potential by about 15 percent.

A second, much smaller, hydroelectric station with a capacity of 400,000
kilowatts and a planned output of 1.5 billion kilowatt-hours per year is
to be built jointly with Yugoslavia on the Danube River below the Iron
Gate plant. Plans for this station were to be initialed by the
negotiators before the end of 1971, but information on the dates for the
start and completion of construction is not available. Plans for the
construction of yet another power station on the Danube River, as a
joint venture with Bulgaria in the Cernavoda-Silistra area, were
announced in the fall of 1971. This station is to have a capacity of
760,000 kilowatts and an annual output of about 3.8 billion
kilowatt-hours. Construction is apparently scheduled to begin in 1975.

An agreement with the Soviet Union to build a 440,000-kilowatt nuclear
power station, using a Soviet reactor, was signed in May 1970.
Construction of the plant is to begin in 1972, and completion is
scheduled for 1978. The agreement culminated extensive negotiations with
the Soviet Union and several noncommunist countries. The ultimate choice
is believed by Western observers to have been dictated primarily by
political considerations.

Initial plans for nuclear power plants called for an installed capacity
of 1 million kilowatts by 1975 and 2.4 million kilowatts by 1980.
Construction was to begin in the 1966-70 period, but this target was not
met. A subsequently revised plan for the 1971-80 period envisaged the
construction of nuclear plants with a total capacity of from 1.8 million
to 2