Funding for CESEC gas connectivity accord agreed on in Budapest

Ministers from Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Austria, and the European Union (EU) agreed on 179 million euros (201 million U.S. dollars) in funding to connect their national gas pipelines here on Friday.

After the meeting of the Central and South-Eastern European Gas Connectivity (CESEC) working group, EU Commissioner for Climate Action and Energy Miguel Arias Canete told a press conference this was the most successful meeting of the group since it was set up in February 2015.

The agreement is part of the European Commission-sponsored Connecting Europe Facility (CEF).

The group signed a joint statement on establishing a gas transport corridor running though Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary, that would allow liquid natural gas (LNG) to move from one country to the next and to connect Ukraine to the network.

Plans called for turning the national pipelines into bi-directional ones. In fact, Hungary and Croatia envisage signing an agreement on this shortly. Construction of an LNG terminal on the Croatian seacoast is also a priority project, Arias Canete said.

Maros Sefcovic, Vice-President of the European Commission in charge of the Energy Union, said the southeastern European countries included in the accord were among the most vulnerable and that the goal was to provide them with at least three different sources from which to procure natural gas.

These countries, including Hungary, had been paying 20 percent more for their gas than Western Europe, Sefcovic said.

The CESEC was set up after Russia cancelled its plans to build a South Stream gas pipeline. The organization hopes to facilitate the delivery of natural gas from Azerbaijan and eventually from Central Asia to the Central and Southern European region. Endit