3rd Budapest Energy Summit international conference goes virtual today

Hungary has made significant progress in the area of energy diversification, the minister of foreign affairs and trade said on Tuesday, opening the third Budapest Energy Summit international conference.

Péter Szijjártó said energy supplies were always a critical issue in central Europe, and the countries of the region were making significant progress to diversify their energy resources. Energy supplies are also a matter of national security in the region, he added.

Infrastructure is historically defined, with East-West networks being more developed than North-South networks, an issue that needs to be addressed, he said.

Liquefied gas will be part of Hungary’s energy mix as the LNG terminal in Krk, in Croatia, comes online in January,

he said, adding that Hungary has reserved an annual 1 billion cubic metres of LNG from this terminal starting in January 2021, enabling the country to sign a long-term gas supply contract with Shell which does not involve Russian sources, he said.

Szijjártó also said that

the Paks 2 nuclear power station upgrade was progressing well.

The government is dedicated to clean, efficient and modern energy supplies, and rejects negative discrimination against nuclear energy, he added. Without nuclear energy, it would be impossible to meet the CO2 emissions targets, he said.

Hungary is dedicated to the European Union’s targets and is one of 21 countries that has increased economic output while cutting CO2 emissions in the past ten years, Szijjártó said.

Progress has also been made in securing electricity supplies, with two new Slovak interconnectors coming online next year and the final phase of the construction of a Slovenia-Hungary interconnector already under way, he added.

Construction of a 50 km pipeline has started on the Serbian-Hungarian border which will give access to the southern gas corridor, including Azerbaijani, central Asian gas and Greek LNG gas, he said.

The Budapest Energy Summit will go virtual this year, live streaming here!