BUDAPEST: Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban said on Friday the country expects to cover about half of its domestic natural gas needs with imports from Romania as of 2021 or 2022. Hungary will soon sign a contract that will allow it to import about 4 billion cubic metres of natural gas from Romania over the next 15 years, Orban said as quoted in a statement by the Hungarian government. The Russian gas monopoly in Hungary will end in 2021 or 2022 and then the whole region of Central and Eastern Europe will be in a new geostrategic situation, Orban said after a meeting with Serbian prime minister Ana Brnabic. Hungary has already completed the construction of a gas link with Romania and works on the other side of the border are already underway, Orban said. Earlier this week, Hungary’s foreign minister Peter Szijjarto said the Romanian government committed to constructing compressors that will allow the transportation of 1.75 billion cubic metres of natural gas to Hungary annually. Moreover, Romania plans to expand by 2022 its gas transport capacity to allow the export of 4.4 billion cubic metres of gas annually to Hungary from the natural gas fields operated by ExxonMobil and OMV on its territory, the Hungarian foreign ministry said.
