Gas supplies are to flow to Hungary from Serbia and Austria, bypassing Ukraine.
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The signing of the Hungarian-Russian energy agreement comes at a time when natural gas prices in Europe are breaking records before the start of the winter heating season. European countries are more dependent on natural gas than ever for efforts to abandon coal and increase the use of cleaner energy sources. They use it to heat households and supply electricity to industry.
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In this context, Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó stated at the end of August that the contract would be concluded for 15 years. He did not announce the price of deliveries at the time, but stated that it would be more favorable than the current one.
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Deliveries via Serbia and Austria
The head of Gazprom, Alexei Miller, came to Budapest to sign the agreement. The agreement will enter into force on October 1 – thanks to it, 3.5 billion cubic meters of natural gas will flow to Hungary through Serbia and one billion cubic meters from Austria.
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The news agencies do not state which gas pipelines will be used to fulfill the contractual supplies of raw materials, but the TurkStream gas pipeline is also offered, which also anticipated the possibility of supplies to other countries in the region, including Serbia and Austria.
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Kiev is opposed to Russia’s attempts to use energy as a political weapon against Ukraine and Europe. He has already sharply criticized the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, which bypasses Ukraine as a transit country.
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“We consider this to be a purely political, economically unwise decision taken in favor of the Kremlin and to the detriment of Ukraine’s national interests and Ukrainian-Hungarian relations,” the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Monday.
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Hungary relied on Russia for most of the gas it imported through Ukraine via a pipeline. In recent years, however, the country has diversified its gas supply, for example by opening a cross-border interconnector with most of its neighbors and securing supplies from the British-Dutch company Royal Dutch Shell via a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal in Croatia.
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