Russian company Gazprom to provide Hungary and China with additional gas for winter

Russian gas company Gazprom will provide Hungary and China with additional gas later this year. The company’s CEO Alexei Miller said this, according to the TASS news agency. Russian President Vladimir Putin met with the leaders of both countries in China last week, and Miller was also part of the Russian delegation. Hungary has had long-term contracts with Gazprom for gas supplies since 2021.

„Significant additional volumes will go to the Hungarian market. This year, additional volumes have already reached 1.3 billion cubic meters of gas. And we have a contract to regularly supply further volumes in the coming autumn-winter period,“ Miller said.

Hungary is the only European Union country whose leader, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, has maintained friendly ties with Putin since Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine in late February last year, Reuters reported. Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó has previously said that Hungary is satisfied with its current gas supply contract with Russia. In addition to the EU, Hungary is also a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Hungary still gets most of its natural gas from Russia. Hungarian company MVM signed two long-term contracts with Gazprom in September 2021 to supply 4.5 billion cubic meters of gas per year through pipelines running via Serbia and Austria, bypassing Ukraine. With supplies via the Nord Stream pipeline suspended, a contract to increase Russian gas supplies along the southern route—via the TurkStream pipeline and its branch through Bulgaria and Serbia—was signed in October 2022. Hungary received 4.8 billion cubic meters of gas via this route last year, TASS reported.

Gazprom is trying to offset the loss of most of its European markets since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine. The company supplied gas to the EU mainly via the Nord Stream pipeline, which runs along the bed of the Baltic Sea. However, explosions put the pipeline out of service last autumn, and investigations to date have not established who was responsible for the blasts.

Orbán told Putin in China last Tuesday that Hungary had never wanted to oppose Russia and had sought to preserve bilateral contacts, Reuters reported. The US ambassador to Hungary called Orbán’s decision to continue talks troubling. Estonia’s prime minister said that images of the two leaders shaking hands were very unpleasant.

Hungary is considered a key potential opponent of a decision in a process due to begin in December on whether the EU should open accession talks with Ukraine. This would require unanimous support from all 27 member states. The EU as a whole has sharply reduced its dependence on Russian energy commodities in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but Hungary has nevertheless secured Russian gas volumes beyond those agreed earlier.

The head of Gazprom said that daily demand for Russian gas is also rising in China. „We regularly supply additional volumes to the Chinese market; we have been doing so for several years. This year, I think, the (additional volumes) will reach 600 million cubic meters of gas,“ Miller said.

Czech Industry and Trade Minister Jozef Síkela said in July that Czechia had not taken any gas from Russia in the first half of this year.