Hungary taps strategic gas reserves

Gas transmission company FGSZ tapped Hungary's strategic gas reserve on Wednesday, releasing 3.6m cubic metres to ease supply after deliveries from Ukraine were cut off on Tuesday, FGSZ CEO Janos Zsuga said in the afternoon.

Earlier in the day, oil and gas company CEO Zsolt Hernadi told a parliamentary committee that the strategic reserve's daily release capacity was limited to about 3m cubic metres for technical reasons.

Mr Zsuga said restrictions ordered for big gas consumers were expected to reduce consumption by 4m cubic metres on Wednesday. It is hoped restrictions on consumers of more than 2,500 cubic metres of gas per hour, announced late Tuesday, will reduce consumption by a daily 6.5m-7m cubic metres, while restrictions on consumers of 500m-2,500 cubic metres per hour will cut consumption a further 1m-2m cubic metres, he added.

Hungary can draw on a daily 52m cubic metres of gas from commercial reserves, 9m cubic metres from domestic production and 3m cubic metres in imports arriving via Austria, Mr Zsuga said.

Including the daily 3m cubic metres available from the strategic reserve, this gives Hungary about 67m cubic metres of gas a day, Econews calculated.

Total gas consumption on Tuesday - before restrictions were ordered for big consumers - was 68m cubic metres.

On cold days, such as Wednesday, households in Hungary consume 50m cubic metres of gas.

Mr Zsuga said earlier that household and communal consumers use 1.5m-2m cubic metres more for every single Celsius degree the temperature drops.

Temperatures in Hungary have been a few degrees below zero Celsius for days, and Tamas Toth, a meteorologist with the National Meteorological Service, told MTI on Wednesday that temperatures were likely to drop in the coming days, reaching as low as minus 20 degrees Celsius on Friday and Saturday.

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