Hungary facing dilemma over gas imports, says Hungarian FM

Hungary and central Europe as a whole find themselves facing a dilemma regarding their gas supplies, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó told reporters on Thursday.

Hungary has three options for importing natural gas, Szijjártó said. It can get its gas via Ukraine from Russia, through Austria from mostly Russian sources or through Slovakia, but Hungary has no access to gas from this route, he said.

At the same time, the capacities of the German-Czech and Czech-Slovak gas interconnectors are almost fully tied down by Russian state-owned gas giant Gazprom until 2039, so

Russian gas remains the only option through those routes, too,

he said.

The involvement of Croatia and Romania would resolve the situation, but these countries “have imposed a blockade on Hungary”, Szijjártó said.

“So at this point diversification sounds good … but since neither the United States nor the European Union could carry out any kind of infrastructural developments over the past years, …