4th Budapest LNG Summit – Foreign minister: past winter in Europe had been mild, the next heating season to be more difficult
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The current situation on the energy market is “killing” Europe’s competitiveness, Péter Szijjártó, the minister of foreign affairs and trade, told a conference in Budapest on Monday, adding that the only solution was to expand the natural gas sources available to the continent.
Addressing the 4th Budapest LNG Summit, Szijjártó said it had become clear last year that energy security in Europe had been “an illusion”. According to a ministry statement, Szijjarto argued that the war in Ukraine and the “failure” of the response measures to it had at one point resulted in a tenfold increase in the price of gas.
Concerning the sabotage of the Nord Stream offshore pipeline, Szijjártó said it was “insane” that there had been “no international, impartial, independent investigation” of the incident.
“Imagine the same thing in America . imagine the reaction there,” he said.
Meanwhile, Szijjártó said there had been waves of “fake news” across Europe before the winter concerning high gas storage levels, pointing out that there had been little mention of storage levels relative to consumption.
Szijjártó said that though the past winter in Europe had been mild, experts were projecting the next heating season to be more difficult due to the loss of at least 50 billion cubic metres of Russian natural gas, the increased demand resulting from the reboot of the Chinese economy and limited European LNG capacities.
The current situation is “killing” Europe’s competitiveness, he said, arguing that the price of natural gas on the continent was seven times as high as in the United States, while electricity cost three times as much as in China.
Mr. Szijjártó is doing a great job – just ask Oleg Bondarenko, who even commended his efforts, by name!
https://index.hu/gazdasag/2023/04/02/orosz-ukran-konfliktus-haboru-baratsagtalan-orszag-orosz-kapcsolat/ –
“The political scientist said that Hungary joined the sanctions, but could not do anything else because he is an EU member state. “If it had not joined, the European Union would not have been able to introduce a single package of sanctions, ten of which have already been introduced. Meanwhile, two nuclear energy projects are being built in Hungary, in which Russian companies are also involved, and Viktor Orbán occupies a position that complements Russia as much as possible, and is considered Europe’s most loyal leader to Moscow. Calling the Hungarian prime minister and Hungary ‘unfriendly’ is unfair,” “