“Hungary, as the first of the affected states to do so, has come to an agreement with the Russian party on the settlement of the May oil contamination”, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó announced at a press conference in Budapest on Tuesday.

Mr. Szijjártó said the document will be signed by the Hungarian and Russian parties on Wednesday. In the presence of the President and CEO of Lukoil, the Minister also said that during the course of negotiations the possibility of extending the existing cooperation between Hungarian oil company MOL and the Russian oil company to also include high added value petrochemicals was also raised, in addition to which talks have also begun on the possible storage of Russian oil in Hungary. “Natural gas storage has broken all previous records in Hungary, with domestic gas storage facilities successfully reaching 100 percent capacity this year with a total stored quantity of 6.5 billion cubic metres”, the Minister told the press.

Mr. Szijjártó said the expansion of the Paks Nuclear Power Plant can now continue with the drawing up of the establishment permit application, following the acceptance of the technical plans. The document, which is several hundreds of thousands of pages long, is expected to be submitted to the Hungarian Atomic Energy Authority by 30 June 2020. “The government regards the construction of the new blocks as a condition for competitiveness and environmental protection, in view of the fact that without nuclear energy it is impossible to reduce the emission of harmful substances, and cheap and clean energy is also vital to sustainable economic growth”, Mr. Szijjártó underlined.

According to the Minister, Hungarian-Russian energy cooperation is continuing smoothly, is assuring the country’s energy requirements and the parties are committed to its long-term operation. He stressed that Hungary can essentially depend only on Russian energy sources in view of the fact that the conditions for a supply of energy from the south remain lacking and the countries involved have not made the necessary energy policy decisions. “Nevertheless, Hungarian-Russian cooperation is still not as significant as that developed with Moscow by Western energy companies despite the sanctions, but is becoming closer year by year”, he added. According to Mr. Szijjártó, “energy security is a national strategic and national security issue, and as a result, decisions on this subject must continue to be made exclusively in accordance with Hungarian national interests”.

At the press conference, President and CEO of MOL Zsolt Hernádi said cooperation with Russia’s energy companies, Lukoil and Transneft, is vital to Hungary. The CEO said the fact that oil contaminated with chlorine found its way into the oil pipeline arriving from Russia this spring was a one-off incident. “We succeeded in rapidly settling the issues that had arisen, and the negotiations have reinforced the long-term relationship between the companies involved”, he added.

(MTI)