June 5 (SeeNews) - Hungary expects to start importing natural gas via Serbia in October 2021, Hungarian foreign minister Peter Szijjarto has said.
"Gas could begin arriving in Hungary from the direction of Serbia in October 2021, perhaps in larger quantities than originally planned," Szijjarto told a news conference following a meeting with Serbian energy minister Aleksandar Antic in Budapest on Thursday, according to a government press release.
Hungary is ready to invest in additional capacities to ensure imports of larger-than-planned volumes of gas if local companies indicate that there could be an annual demand of more than 6 billion cubic metres, Szijjarto said.
The governments of Serbia and Hungary will soon sign an agreement on the construction of a cross-border natural gas interconnection, Szijjarto said.
In December, Serbia completed the laying of about 400 lm of pipes of a string of the TurkStream pipeline of Russia's Gazprom for the transit of natural gas to Europe from Turkey via Bulgaria, Serbia and Hungary. The Bulgarian section of the project is still unfinished.
The TurkStream offshore gas pipeline, stretching 930 km across the Black Sea from Russia to Turkey, will consist of two parallel strings with annual throughput capacity of 15.75 billion cubic metres of gas each. One string is intended for consumers in Turkey, while the second is planned to carry gas to customers in Europe.