Seven countries of south-eastern Europe are discussing the issue of expanding the infrastructure for gas supplies to central Europe, since the European Union refused to help them in this. This statement was made by the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Economic Relations of Hungary Peter Szijjarto in an interview with the Turkish TV channel ‘TRT World.’ “The European Union is putting pressure on us to buy gas not from Russia, but from another place. We say: OK, we are ready to diversify, but we need new supply routes, please help us. And they say: no, gas is not modern, it is not sustainable and we need to look for green solutions. You know, maybe in 10-20 years some alternative energy sources will be able to replace gas, but not now and not in the foreseeable future,” Szijjarto said. According to him, the European Union “closes its eyes” and does not help with the diversification of infrastructure, so Slovakia, Romania, Serbia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey “held a series of negotiations on how to increase the capacity (infrastructure) in the region so that the system is capable of delivering large volumes of gas from Turkey, Azerbaijan and Qatar through southeastern Europe to central Europe.” It should be noted that in the fourth quarter of this year Hungary plans to start importing Azerbaijani gas in the amount of 100 mcm. Next year, Hungary plans to increase the volume of purchases of natural gas in Azerbaijan to 1 bcm
Source: Turan News Agency