Azerbaijani-Hungarian friendship – Hungarian MOL bought oil fields and pipelines

The Hungarian Oil and Gas Public Limited Company, known as MOL Group, bought an oil field and pipelines in Azerbaijan for 1.57 billion dollars.

MOL is the biggest Hungarian enterprise in the world. Members of MOL Group include, among others, the Croatian and Slovakian formerly state-owned oil and gas companies, INA and Slovnaft. MOL is Hungary’s most profitable enterprise, with net profits of $1.1 billion in 2018. With such success, it is also

the third most valuable company in Central and Eastern Europe

and placed 402nd on the Fortune Global 500 list of the world’s largest companies in 2013 with revenue equal to one-fifth of Hungary’s GDP at the time.

It is part of MOL’s strategy to expand in the Central European region and even other parts of the world. For example, on March 19, it was announced that it found oil in the Norwegian North Sea. Now, it bought the shares in the ACG oil field and the BTC pipeline in Azerbaijan. They did the transaction worth 1.57 billion dollars 

together with Chevron Global Ventures Ltd. and Chevron BTC Pipeline Ltd. 

Based on their agreement, they got 9.57 pc in the Azerbaijani-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) oil field and 8.9 pc in the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline. That line connects the oil field with Ceyhan, which is near the Mediterranean Sea, 24 reported.

• MOL switches plants to sanitiser production
• MOL announces discovery in Norwegian North Sea
• Croatia court finds MOL chief Hernádi guilty on corruption charges

Thanks to the deal, MOL will become the third biggest owner in the ACG oil field, which is near the Caspian Sea, after BP and SOCAR. The field’s operator is BP, which has been producing oil there since 1997, and based on calculations,

the field still has a lot of resources.

The purchase can be regarded as a milestone in the international expansion of MOL since the total number of barrels that can be extracted there is 3 billion until 2049.

Origo reported a couple of days before that Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó’s Azerbaijani colleague promised that Baku would check all aircraft heading towards Hungary, carrying tools for the defence against coronavirus epidemic, as soon as possible. Azerbaijani Minister for Economy, Mikayil Jabbarov, and Mr Szijjártó were talking about the issue on the phone the previous Sunday.

The Hungarian minister added that the country receives a lot of support from the East, which is why it is important to create alternative routes for the aircraft carrying those supplies home.

Source: 24.hu, origo.hu