Hungary, Romania agree on gas supplies

Romania will establish the technical conditions for gas exports to Hungary by 2020 in line with an agreement signed by foreign ministers Péter Szijjártó of Hungary and Teodor Melescanu of Romania in Bucharest on Monday.

From 2022, large volumes of gas extracted on the Black Sea will be available to Hungary, Szijjártó said. Hungarian companies have reserved the entire 4.4 billion cubic metres annual capacity on the Romania-Hungary supply route, he added.

“This is the first opportunity in the past few decades that Hungary can buy large volumes of gas from a non-Russian source,” he said, hailing the cooperation agreement as “historic progress towards Hungary’s energy security”.

The Romanian side agreed to build the compressors that will enable an annual supply of 1.75 billion cubic metres of gas by 2020 and this will be expanded to 4.4 billion by 2022.

“Hungary’s government has decided to build the missing pipeline link between the central gas distribution hub in Városföld and Vecsés near Budapest, where the Slovak-Hungarian gas pipeline ends. With this link, the north-south gas corridor, a facility crucial for national security in central Europe, will be complete,” he said.

The two countries agreed that the first TGV-type rail link of the region should be established between Budapest and Cluj (Kolozsvár) in central Romania. The Hungarian government has earmarked 1 billion forints (EUR 3.3m) for the feasibility study of the project, Szijjártó said. He added that Hungary has nothing against Romania’s plan to extend the line to Bucharest.

Hungary and Romania have agreed to convert two out of ten existing temporary border crossings into permanent, round-the-clock facilities.