Hungary has concluded a gas supply agreement with Baku without waiting for the European Union to allocate funds for developing gas delivery infrastructure in the Balkans, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Monday
BUDAPEST (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 10th July, 2023) Hungary has concluded a gas supply agreement with Baku without waiting for the European Union to allocate funds for developing gas delivery infrastructure in the Balkans, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Monday.
He noted that Azerbaijan is "a most obvious option" for Hungary's diversification of gas supplies, although the current gas pipeline network of South Eastern Europe would not allow for large deliveries.
"We have asked the UE to help expand the network, but the bureaucrats in Brussels paid no attention to us, although they constantly demanded that we buy gas from new suppliers. We are not waiting for the EU: we have made all necessary agreements with our Azerbaijani friends, which will start delivering natural gas to Hungary, as a first step, by 100 million cubic meters (3.5 billion cubic feet) until the end of the year," Szijjarto wrote on social media.
He added that Budapest and Baku were close to concluding an agreement on the storage of 50 million cubic meters of gas.
In early June, Hungarian energy company MVM CEEnergy and the State Oil Company of the Republic of Azerbaijan signed an agreement according to which 100 million cubic meters of gas will be delivered to Hungary by the end of 2023.
Budapest is working on diversifying gas supplies to the country. In particular, Hungary is interested in increasing LNG supplies via the terminal in Croatia's Krk and developing a gas field in Romania. Budapest is also considering the possibility of importing oil from Ecuador if the land transit of Russian oil through Ukraine becomes impossible.
In December 2022, Szijjarto said that during his visit to Qatar's capital of Doha, he had made agreements with Qatari officials, in accordance with which energy corporations of both countries would start negotiations of deliveries of liquefied natural gas to Hungary in about three years. He also said that Budapest was holding talks with Oman on potential imports of oil and natural gas. The Hungarian foreign minister added that agreements with Gulf countries were aimed at diversification of supplies and did not mean that Hungary would refuse to make similar agreements with Russia.
