"Let's not panic": Hungarian CEO confident of country's oil supply despite Ukraine's blocking of Lukoil transit
He said Hungary has 90-day strategic reserves with the ability to buy Russian oil through Croatia
Hungary will not face an oil shortage due to Ukraine's decision to block the transit of Lukoil's oil, said Zsolt Hernadi, CEO of the Hungarian oil and gas conglomerate MOL Group.
"Let's not panic," Ernády told a conference on Monday, as quoted by Bloomberg.
He said Hungary has 90 days of strategic reserves with the ability to buy Russian oil through Croatia.
The statement contradicts the concerns of Prime Minister Viktor Orban's government and Slovak authorities, who have asked the EU to lose track of the situation.
However, the EU dismissed these concerns, stating that Ukraine's sanctions against Lukoil would not affect transit operations through the Druzhba pipeline.
EU ambassadors are not taking kindly to complaints from Budapest and Bratislava about Kyiv's blocking of the flow of Russian pipeline oil, Politico reported on 29 July, citing backroom talks between European diplomats.
While EU officials publicly promised to reconsider the issue, they privately expressed resentment that neither Hungary nor Slovakia had managed to reduce their dependence on Russian oil, while many other member states of the European bloc had succeeded.
Background. Earlier it became known that Hungary had refused Croatia's offer to provide it with oil to replace Russian oil. The country's Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto accused Croatia of a "joint attack on Hungary with the European Commission" and called it an "unreliable transit country".
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