Hungary deprived of Russian crude for a month as Ukraine announces fresh postponement – how long will we endure?

The Ukrainian side has once again postponed the restart of the Druzhba oil pipeline, this time to 26 February, the Slovak economy ministry announced on Tuesday, citing information sent to the state transit firm Transpetrol. Hungary has not received Russian crude oil for almost a month.

This detail comes from the latest version of the delivery schedule regularly supplied to Transpetrol, which has previously flagged other possible dates for resuming shipments.

According to the ministry’s latest statement, the Ukrainians have not specified the reason for this further delay.

Russian Druzhba pipeline has been empty since 27 January

Hungarian oil and gas company MOL said its communication regarding the need to free up national strategic crude reserves due to a disruption of deliveries through the Druzhba pipeline complied with stock exchange disclosure rules in a statement issued on Tuesday.

Responding to press reports, MOL said its announcement regarding a request to free up the reserves was made when the situation’s business impact became evident. In the announcement made on February 16, MOL had noted that no deliveries of Russian crude through the Druzhba pipeline had arrived since January 27.

MOL crude reserves will be exhausted

In its statement on Tuesday, MOL said the impact of the disruption of deliveries through the Druzhba became apparent after an official notification was received from Ukraine indicating that any restart of flows through the Druzhba was uncertain, and that MOL’s own crude inventories would be exhausted sooner or later.

MOL noted that deliveries through the Druzhba had been disrupted more than 20 times in recent years for technical, maintenance or other reasons. In all cases, deliveries restarted before MOL’s own crude stocks were depleted, it added.

Hungary open to diversification, but will not replace cheap, reliable energy sources

Hungary is open to diversification, but will not replace existing cheap and reliable energy sources with more expensive and less reliable ones, as this would mean giving up on reducing utility costs, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said on Tuesday in Washington, DC.

Szijjártó told the Transatlantic Gas Cooperation Summit that, unlike the European mainstream, the Hungarian government views energy supply not as an ideological issue, but as a practical, physical, and mathematical one, the ministry said in a statement. In his speech, he pointed out that Hungary has no coastline, so its energy supply is particularly determined by geographical conditions and available infrastructure.

“If there is no pipeline, there is no natural gas. It’s that simple. We can buy gas from wherever there is a pipeline to Hungary, and where the pipeline comes from depends on our neighbours and our neighbours’ neighbours,” he said. “We have already connected our networks with six of our seven neighbours. But if our neighbours and their neighbours do not make the necessary investments, then we are in trouble,” he added.

Szijjártó praises Rubio

He said it was very refreshing to hear US counterpart Marco Rubio saying that geographical conditions must be respected when it comes to energy supply. “You never hear such a statement in Europe,” he added.

Szijjártó welcomed the fact that US President Donald Trump had granted Hungary an exemption from sanctions affecting the Russian energy sector last year, thus avoiding a supply crisis.

Szijjártó added that diversification was very important and stressed that this meant involving additional sources and transport routes in the supply chain, not excluding existing ones.

“And it certainly cannot mean replacing cheap and reliable sources with more expensive and less reliable ones,” he said. He said Hungary was open to good offers, which is why the country was also part of the so-called Vertical Corridor project.

Natural gas would be more expensive

“But here again, we need to be clear about the physics. The current capacity of the Vertical Corridor is not sufficient to fully supply Hungary. Not to mention that deliveries arriving via this route are currently 20 percent more expensive than other routes to Hungary, including the TurkStream pipeline,” he added.

He said that Turkish natural gas was already being transported to Hungary, “making our country the first non-neighbouring country to which Türkiye exports“. Similarly, Azerbaijani gas deliveries have also begun, he added.

The Hungarian government has also signed long-term natural gas purchase agreements with the American companies Chevron and ConocoPhillips, and is in negotiations with Romania about starting imports in the future, he said.

If you misse our previous articles:

• It’s decided! EU sanctions blocked as Hungary and Slovakia refuse to back the 20th Russia sanctions package
• Orbán’s speech in parliament: debate on Ukraine, Russian energy sources instead of American ones, EU vetoes and domestic measures