The Foreign Minister of Hungary Peter Szijjarto said on Thursday that he has signed a 15-year gas supply agreement with Russian energy giant Gazprom, which would take effect when the current arrangement expires in September, Reuters reports.
Hungary’s natural gas imports have diversified in recent years, with the installation of cross-border interconnectors with most of its neighbors and the signing of gas deals, notably one with Shell via a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal in Croatia.
Hungary has relied on Russia for the majority of its natural gas supplies via a pipeline through Ukraine, despite the Shell contract being its first with a Western supplier. With the opening of a new southern pipeline over the Balkans, that will alter.
Szijjarto did not say how much Hungary would import under the new agreement or how much it would cost, just that pricing would be “flexible” and that enterprises from both nations would work out the specifics.
In separate negotiations with Russia’s state nuclear construction business Rosatom, the foreign minister, who is in Saint Petersburg for an energy summit, agreed that development on Hungary’s new nuclear reactor in the central Hungarian Paks site will be expedited starting in the autumn.
