Page 12 - EurOil Week 39 2021

EurOil PIPELINES & TRANSPORT EurOil

Hungary long-term gas deal with Gazprom

HUNGARY HUNGARY’S utility giant MVM has signed a the south, through Hungary's interconnector
10+5-year gas supply agreement with Russia's with Serbia, and 1 bcm via the pipeline running
Ukraine is not happy Gazprom on September 27 that will guarantee from Austria.
that Hungary has Hungary's energy security for a long time and The agreement has an option to lower deliv-
agreed to get its gas via at a low price, Minister of Foreign Affairs and ery volumes after the tenth year.
another route. Trade Peter Szijjarto said at the signing cere- "Hungary will start receiving Gazprom's gas
mony in Budapest. starting from October 1 via TurkStream and the
The long-term gas contract between Hungary pipelines of South-Eastern Europe," Gazprom's
and Russia has been in place for 26 years, but will head Alexei Miller said in a statement.
expire at the end of September. Hungary has cov- In both cases, delivery will bypass Ukraine,
ered 80-90% of its gas needs, some 9-10bn cubic which has rekindled tensions between Budapest
metres from Russia, delivered through Ukraine, and Kyiv. In a statement issued on Monday, the
until now. Ukrainian Foreign Ministry expressed disap-
Gazprom delivered 8.6 bcm of gas to Hun- pointment with Budapest's decision to sign the
gary in 2020, down from 10.5 bcm in 2019. agreement with Moscow.
Deliveries in H1 came to 3.9 bcm. Ukraine will postpone the meeting of the
"In Hungary, energy supply is a security, sov- Ukrainian-Hungarian Intergovernmental Com-
ereignty and economic issue, not a political one. mission for Economic Co-operation scheduled
Homes and houses cannot be heated with politi- for September 29-30 in Budapest. The new con-
cal resolutions, but with gas, and the same is true tract damages the bilateral Ukrainian-Hungar-
for the viability of industry," Szijjarto said. ian relations and therefore Kyiv is going to appeal
The price in the contract is much more to the European Commission, it added.
favourable than the one in the existing contract, Budapest responded by accusing Ukraine of
which will help keep the Hungarian retail gas attempting to interfere in their affairs.
price one of the lowest in Europe. "Since Gazprom has gas, and we don’t, the
Under the new agreement, Hungary will buy situation is rather unequal. So along whichever
4.5 bcm of gas per year from the Russian state- route they deliver the gas, we’ll buy it," Szijjarto
owned giant, including 3.5 bcm delivered from added. ™

SPAIN SPANISH oil company Repsol has broken Repsol also made headlines in March,
ground on a new LNG bunkering facility in the announcing that it had bunkered a ship in the
Spain hosts six Spanish port of Bilbao, one of the vessel owners Spanish port of Cartagena with carbon-neutral
operational LNG that intends to use the facility reported on Sep- LNG, marking the first time that this had been
reception and storage tember 21. done.
plants along its coast. The new terminal, with a 1,000-cubic metre Spain hosts six operational LNG reception
storage capacity, should come online in the first and storage plants along its coast. The use of the
half of 2022. It will provide LNG fuel to Brit- super-cooled gas as a bunkering fuel is growing
tany Ferries’ Salamanca and Santona ferries, the quickly, with the number of refuelling operations
company said. Those two vessels are due to start expanding to 741 last year from 199 in 2019,
operating along the UK-Spain route in 2022 and according to Gasnam. The European Commis-
2023 respectively. sion is also backing the construction of an LNG
According to Brittany Ferries, Repsol will bunkering vessel to serve the Spanish port of
invest more than €10mn ($11.7mn) in the Algeciras.
project. The energy firm has agreed to build a LNG bunkering is also growing in the wider
second LNG bunkering facility further east in Mediterranean area, partly thanks to a rise in
Salamanca as well. Both projects are co-financed LNG-fuelled shipping trade between Asia and
by the European Commission through its Con- Europe that passes through the Suez Canal. The
necting Europe Facility. International Maritime Organisation (IMO)
“This is welcome news and I applaud Repsol is set to steadily tighten its rules for shipping
and our port partners in Bilbao for driving this for- emissions over the coming years, which should
ward,” Brittany Ferries CEO Christophe Mathieu be a boon for LNG as the cleanest fuel currently
said, commenting on the start of construction. available at scale. There are also discussions to
“The move to cleaner, green fuels relies on an inte- make the Mediterranean an emissions control
grated approach that connects vehicles with fuel area (ECA), which would encourage a further
suppliers and other important partners like ports.” growth in LNG use. ™

P12 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 39 30•September•2021