Hungary is seemingly caught
between a rock and a hard place.
While other EU countries have been able
to ramp up imports of LNG
as Russian supply dwindles,
Hungary is landlocked and far
from the nearest LNG terminal.
So, how can Hungary reduce its reliance
on Russian gas and does it want to?
First of all, we have a long term agreement
for 4.5bcm of natural gas
and this agreement
was always fulfilled by the Russians.
So, we have no excuse to cancel this agreement
because this quantity was always
supplied by the Russian side.
And the second issue is that presumably
the Russian gas is a little cheaper
than any other alternatives.
Hungary has so far this year
imported around 8bcm of gas,
of which the vast majority was pumped
from Russia through the TurkStream pipeline
via Turkey, Bulgaria and Serbia.
Lesser volumes have also arrived
from Romania and Austria, as well as from Croatia
via its Krk LNG terminal and domestic supply.
Although Hungary faces pressure
to reduce its purchases of Russian gas,
thereby lightening Moscow's war chest,
how likely is it to do this
given the reliability of supply
and favourable prices until now?
I think there is a traditional attachment
to Russia unfortunately, which means that
we have originally bought all our gas from Russia.
And, the willingness is missing because
you couldn't hear any discussions
in the past few years,
even before the war or after the war,
about anything long term, which would
mean that we could switch off Russian gas.
But this reliance and lack of diversification
could also provide greater risk to supply.
The risk of Russian gas is getting higher.
I mean, political risk and the risk of disruption
is also relatively high because
Russia is a country in war with Ukraine.
The EU wants the member state
to decouple from Russian hydrocarbons.
It can also happen that Russia may decide
that, you know, we will not give Hungary
or any other country gas anymore.
If Russian gas is available,
I assume Hungary will buy the same quantity.
