Hungary Takes 18% Less Russian Gas in 2020
Hungary imported 8.6bn m3 of Russian gas in 2020, Russia's Gazprom reported on January 22, marking a 18% decline from the record 10.5bn m3 it took in 2019.
Gazprom noted that last year's volume still represented the second largest annual amount in the last 12 years. Supplies came to only 7.4bn m3 in 2018 and 5.8bn m3 in 2017, Gazprom data shows. Gazprom last week said that Hungary was among the markets taking appreciably more in the first half of this January compared with the same period last year.
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The Russian supplier's sales to many European markets contracted in 2020, as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, high levels of gas in storage, competition from LNG and mild weather at the start of the year. Hungary currently gets its Russian gas mostly via Ukraine, but it expects to start receiving supplies from the TurkStream pipeline by the end of this year. This will be possible thanks to the completion of TurkStream's European extension, known as Balkan Stream.
Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller held a meeting via video link on January 22 with Hungarian foreign minister Peter Siyjarto, in which they discussed co-operation in the gas sector.