Gazprom has increased gas supply to Hungary, says official
Gazprom has ramped up flows to Hungary through the TurkStream pipeline that brings gas to Hungary via Bulgaria and Serbia, a Hungarian foreign ministry official said on Saturday.
The Russian state-owned company started delivering more gas than it was contractually obliged to on Friday, Menczer Tamás, an official in Hungary’s ministry of foreign affairs and trade, wrote in a Facebook post.
By the end of August, Gazprom would supply Hungary with an addition 2.6m cubic metres a day, said Menczer, a member of prime minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party.
TurkStream, which runs through the Black Sea, is called Balkan Stream in Bulgaria, where the pipeline enters European Union territory. While Russia has stopped gas deliveries to EU member Bulgaria, Sofia continues to transit Russian gas to Serbia and Hungary.
Three weeks ago Hungary’s foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, travelled to Moscow to discuss buying an additional 700m cubic metres of gas, becoming the only top official from an EU member state to visit Russia since late February, bar the Austrian chancellor, Karl Nehammer, made a trip in April.
Hungary, which is about 85% dependent on Russian gas, has consistently opposed the idea of any EU sanctions on Russian gas imports, and Orbán has also lobbied hard to secure an exemption from EU sanctions on Russian crude oil imports.
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It is the only EU member state to have categorically ruled out acting on a plan to cut gas consumption by 15% from August this year until March 2023.
In Germany, which is also reliant on Russian gas imports, the economic ministry announced on Saturday night that the country
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