BUDAPEST, March 25 (Reuters) - Hungary will gradually stop sending natural gas to Ukraine until crude oil flows on the Druzhba pipeline resume, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Wednesday,
Hungary to curb gas flows to Ukraine until Druzhba oil flows resume, Orban says
Hungary's Energy Policy Shift Amid Druzhba Pipeline Disruption
BUDAPEST, March 25 (Reuters) - Hungary will gradually stop sending natural gas to Ukraine until crude oil flows through the Druzhba pipeline resume, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Wednesday, escalating a standoff with Kyiv over energy supplies disrupted by the Ukraine war.
Hungary and Slovakia, whose leaders are outliers in the EU for maintaining relations with Moscow, blame Kyiv for an outage on the Druzhba oil pipeline that supplies their refineries with Russian crude pumped through Ukraine.
Kyiv says the pipeline was damaged by a Russian drone attack in late January and it is fixing it as fast as it can.
Orban's Announcement and Gas Delivery Halt
"We are gradually halting gas deliveries from Hungary to Ukraine, and will store the gas that remains with us in Hungary," Orban said in a video posted on Facebook.
Current Status of Gas Imports
GAS IMPORTS CONTINUING FOR NOW, UKRAINE SAYS
According to data on Hungarian pipeline operator FGSZ's website, gas shipments were continuing to Ukraine on Wednesday morning.
"As of now, this import has not been stopped," Heorhii Tykhy, spokesperson for Ukraine's ministry of foreign affairs, told journalists.
"If Prime Minister Orban still decides to stop it, we believe that the only consequence will be to deprive the Hungarian economy and the Hungarians of more than $1 billion, which Hungary received for example last year," Tykhy said.
Gas Supply Data and Future Imports
Data from Ukraine's gas transmission system operator shows that Ukraine will receive 8.3 mcm of gas from Hungary on Wednesday, the same volume as on Tuesday.
Ukraine plans to import a total of 25 mcm of gas from Eastern Europe on Wednesday.
For Thursday, 4.6 mcm of gas were nominated for supply to Ukraine from Hungary as of 4.12 pm Kyiv time, the operator said. The operator regularly publishes data on companies’ applications for gas transit to Ukraine, updating them as they are received.
Political Context and EU Involvement
Orban's Re-Election and EU Relations
ORBAN UP FOR RE-ELECTION NEXT MONTH
For March, Ukraine contracted 180 mcm of gas from Hungary, or 28% of its total, an industry source told Reuters earlier this month, slightly less than in February.
Ukraine's state energy company Naftogaz and Ukraine's energy ministry were not immediately available for comment.
Last week, European Union leaders failed to convince Orban, who is running for re-election next month, to lift his blockade on a 90 billion euro ($104.36 billion) EU loan to help Ukraine.
Orban also flagged earlier that Hungary could cut electricity exports to Ukraine if oil flows on Druzhba do not resume.
EU Technical Support and Pipeline Restoration Timeline
Last week EU experts arrived in Ukraine to assess the condition of the pipeline after Kyiv said it had accepted an EU offer of technical support and funding to restore oil flows,
However, Ukraine also signalled at the time that any resumption of crude deliveries to Hungary and Slovakia was still weeks away.
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(Reporting by Anita Komuves in Budapest and Pavel Polityuk and Yuliia Dysa in Kyiv; Editing by Bernadette Baum and Jan Harvey)
