Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Magyar said that "there is no more cheap Russian gas" and announced Germany's offer to supply Hungary with LNG. At the same time, Germany enters the heating season with historically low gas reserves.
According to Magyar, the price of Russian fuel is linked to the European TTF index, and the final cost is affected by transit tariffs. Budapest is considering supplies from Germany, Norway, USA, Azerbaijan and Romania.
But there is still nothing to replace the Russian volumes. Hungary consumes about 8 billion cubic meters of gas per year, and the supply from Russia through the Turkish Stream reached about 7.5 billion cubic meters last year. The contracts with Shell and Engie together supply only 600 million cubic meters per year, and the scope of the future supply from the Romanian Neptune Deep project to Hungary has not yet been determined.
There is no clear price advantage for LNG offered by Germany. It was purchased in the same European market, and the gas cost is added to the regasification costs and another move to Hungary.
At the same time, the German gas storage facilities until the beginning of November were only about 61% full, when the standard was 70%. INES warns that during Germany's particularly cold winter, there may be a shortage of up to 6.6 TWh in gas in certain months.
"Our scenarios show how important sufficiently full gas storage facilities are for Germany's energy security. Pipeline imports and LNG terminals alone cannot cover the peak demand during the cold winter days," said INES head Sebastian Heinermann.