Moscow Times cited Mr Csaba Molnar energy minister of Hungary as saying that Hungary government expects to meet its gas needs on last Sunday mainly from domestic resources and will continue shipments started earlier this week to Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia.

Mr Molnar said that Hungary's daily gas consumption was estimated at 61 million to 64 million cubic meters, which it expected to cover using 53 million cubic meters of reserves, 9 million cubic meters of domestic output and 4 million of imports from Western Europe. He said that "These resources that are at our disposal for the day are sufficient to cover the planned consumption safely therefore, we are not planning to impose restrictions."

He added that Hungarian oil and gas firm MOL and Germany's E.On Ruhrgas would export 4.7 million cubic meters of gas to Serbia on last Sunday, 1.5 million cubic meters to Bosnia and 1 million cubic meters to Croatia via Austria. Serbian imports of gas stopped earlier this week when shipments of Russian gas through a pipeline that runs through Ukraine and Hungary were cut off.

Mr Molnar said that he could not predict when Russian gas supplies via Ukraine would restart, despite an agreement between the two parties on deploying international teams of monitors at pumping stations in Russia and Ukraine. He said that "I cannot tell when the gas will arrive, but I think nobody can at this point."

Mr Asimakis Papageorgiou CEO of DEPA said that Russian gas supplies would take at least 3 days to return to the Balkans and Greece because of technical reasons. He said that "For technical reasons, between 3 and 7 days will be needed to restore completely the flow of Russian gas to Balkans and Greece. Small quantities of gas could arrive earlier.”

(Sourced from Moscow Times)