Bulgaria assists Hungary with transit of gas, nuclear fuel supplies - minister

Hungary counts on further reliable deliveries, Szijjarto said during a visit to Sofia on Monday, according to a Hungarian government press release. The strategic goal is to access new resources for projects such as infrastructure development to increase the role of Azeri gas in the region, he added.

Nuclear fuel rods began to be delivered to Hungary's Paks nuclear power plant via Bulgarian Black Sea ports in December, after EU regulations made airborne deliveries from Russia impossible, Szijjarto noted.

Bulgaria has been receiving increased volumes of natural gas from Azerbaijan since the start of operation last October of the Greece-Bulgaria interconnector, which links to the Southern Gas Corridor. Hungary, which is strongly reliant on Russian gas, signed in 2021 a 15-year contract to receive 4.5 bcm of natural gas per year from Russia's Gazprom via the TurkStream pipeline through Bulgaria and Serbia.

Bulgarian president Rumen Radev and Peter Sijjarto discussed the potential for increasing energy diversification by implementing the "Solidarity ring (STRING)" project initiated by Bulgaria, which allows the transfer of additional quantities of natural gas to Europe from the Southern Gas Corridor, using existing infrastructure, according to a separate statement by the president's press office.

In December, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania and Hungary agreed to explore the potential development of a bi-directional Vertical Gas Corridor in the region.