December 7 (SeeNews) - Slovenia and Hungary are in talks for the construction of a pipeline that would link the gas distribution networks of the two countries and diversify energy sources, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban said.
Hungary is contemplating a pipeline with a larger capacity, while Slovenia intends to start smaller, Orban said in a statement by the Hungarian government earlier this week without elaborating on the capacity of the planned pipeline.
There is really no point in building pipelines with a capacity of less than 2 billion cubic metres, Hungarian foreign minister Peter Szijjarto said in a separate statement earlier this week.
According to Slovenian media reports, Hungary is considering the import of Algerian gas through Slovenia, a gas pipeline for the transport of gas from the fields discovered in the Romanian Black Sea waters, and the expansion of an existing gas pipeline to Croatia, through which liquefied natural gas would be imported.
In November, Slovenian company Geoplin signed a deal with Algerian state-owned oil company Sonatrach on deliveries of natural gas between January 1, 2023 and December 31, 2025, an important step towards the diversification of the Alpine country's gas procurement.