Hungarian MOL partners up with Turkish peer to explore and produce hydrocarbon in W Hungary
Hungarian oil and gas company MOL and Turkish peer TPAO are partnering on hydrocarbon exploration and production in the west of Hungary, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó said after a meeting with Türkiye’s Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Alparslan Bayraktar in Budapest on Wednesday.
In a statement issued by his ministry, Szijjarto said the partners had established a joint venture for the purpose and signed two concession contracts in the areas of Tamási and Buzsák. TPAO will invest around HUF 6bn there, he added.
He noted that MOL and TPAO had worked together for a decade already, operating a gas field in Russia and establishing a long-term cooperation in Azerbaijan.
Szijjártó said a Turkish company and an Italian partner had just signed a contract on the construction of a more than HUF 500bn gas-fueled power plant in Tiszaujvaros, to power big industrial investments that are underway in the east of the country.
Szijjártó acknowledged Türkiye’s role in ensuring Hungary’s secure energy supply and said gas volume delivered through the TurkStream pipeline was close to 2.5bn cubic metres in 2025. He added that the pipeline had put Hungary’s gas supply on sure footing, allowing the continuation of the regulated utilities price scheme for households.
In a separate statement, MOL said the Tamási and Buzsák concession contracts were signed by MOL chairman-CEO Zsolt Hernádi and his counterpart at TPAO, Ahmet Turkoglu. MOL noted that the sides had signed a memorandum of understanding, in October 2024, on cooperating in upstream activities in the Caspian Sea region, Turkiye, North Africa, the Middle East and Central and Eastern Europe.
MOL has around 1,300 oil and gas wells in Hungary. The company produced close to 600,000 tonnes of crude and almost 1.5 billion cubic metres of gas, locally, in 2024.
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Cooperation with Turkic states ‘strategic alliance’, says minister
Cooperation between Hungary and the Turkic states is “more than a diplomatic relationship; it is a strategic alliance in higher education, innovation, research and culture”, Balázs Hankó, the minister of culture and innovation, said on Tuesday.
Hankó signed a cooperation agreement with representatives of the five Turkic states and international cultural organisation TURKSOY on the sidelines of the first Hungarian-Turkic Cultural, Higher Education and Innovation Summit now under way in Budapest.
Under the new agreement, the signatories will launch higher education courses, set up scientific and innovation parks, and aid programme for start-ups, as well as opportunities for cooperation in film-making.
The conference is attended by delegations from Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Türkiye, and Uzbekistan, as well as from TURKSOY and the Organisation of Turkic States.
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