Hungarian Conservative

Bulgaria has offered to help maintain Hungary’s energy security if Ukraine does not resume Russian Lukoil oil shipments to Hungary in the near future. Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó called Sofia’s offer a sincere gesture of friendship.

New sanctions by the Ukrainian government have forced oil transports from the Russian oil procedure Lukoil to be stopped to Hungary and Slovakia. However, Hungary is still receiving gas shipments from Russia uninterrupted through the TurkStream pipeline.

The new oil deposit has been found by MOL in collaboration with another Hungarian company, O&GD Central Ltd. The new site is currently producing around 1,000 barrels of crude oil per day.

Viktor Orbán declared that Hungary’s energy supply is a key issue and noted that it is important for Hungary to be able to receive oil not only from Russia but also from Kazakhstan. He added that the volume of this is not significant yet, but the channels have been opened, and this is a significant step for the country’s security.

At a joint press conference held with his Slovak counterpart in Budapest, Minister Szijjártó said both Slovakia and Hungary insist that the composition of the energy mix of member states should remain a national competence.

The foreign minister emphasised right after winter, ‘in Europe, it is fashionable to strut about with great bravado these days,’ but the International Energy Agency recently issued an ‘ominous’ report indicating that the most severe difficulties are expected to come in the next heating season when supply security will be critical.

Eurostat data contradicts a French media outlet’s claim that Hungary is becoming more dependent on Russian energy.

Europe is scrambling to replace Russian oil and gas, which has renewed interest in massive African oil and gas investments.

The energy-intensive sections of France’s industry are converting their boilers from gas to oil-based ones, in order to prevent any outages due to gas-shortages.