Hungary and Romania have agreed on a new gas partnership that will establish the technical conditions for gas exports to Hungary by 2020.
Péter Szijjártó, minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, signed the deal with his counterpart Teodor Melescanu in Bucharest on Monday.
As part of the agreement, large volumes of gas extracted on the Black Sea will be available to Hungary from 2022.
MTI states that Hungarian companies have reserved the entire 4.4 billion cubic meters annual capacity on the Romania-Hungary supply route.
“This is the first opportunity in the past few decades that Hungary can buy large volumes of gas from a non-Russian source,” the minister said. He hailed the cooperation agreement as “historic progress towards Hungary’s energy security”.
The Romanian side agreed to build the compressors that will enable an annual supply of 1.75 billion cubic meters of gas by 2020 and this will be expanded to 4.4 billion by 2022.
“Hungary’s government has decided to build the missing pipeline link between the central gas distribution hub in Városföld and Vecsés near Budapest, where the Slovak-Hungarian gas pipeline ends. With this link, the north-south gas corridor, a facility crucial for national security in central Europe, will be complete,” he said.
The two countries also agreed that the first TGV-type rail link in the region should be established between Budapest and Cluj (Kolozsvár) in central Romania.
The Hungarian government has earmarked 1 billion HUF (3.3m EUR) for the feasibility study of the project. He added that Hungary has nothing against Romania’s plan to extend the line to Bucharest.
The minister also revealed that Hungary and Romania have agreed to convert two out of ten existing temporary border crossings into permanent, round-the-clock facilities.