Natural gas and energy balance

Romanian Prime Minister Emil Boc and his Hungarian counterpart Viktor Orban inaugurated the natural gas pipeline linking the Romanian city of Arad and the Hungarian city of Szeged.

European commissioner for energy Gunther Oettinger attended the event, which took place in Hungary. As a result, the Romanian natural gas transport system will be connected to the rest of Europe and Romania will no longer depend entirely on natural gas coming from Russia via Ukraine.

Prime Minister Boc believes that, with the inauguration of this pipeline, Romania has met a strategic objective and seen a success in its cooperation with neighboring Hungary.


“The completion of this interconnection project is the first step towards an integrated European network. This will ensure security in the provision of natural gas in the region, in line with the gas market evolution, and will render our domestic gas markets more competitive. At a European level, the interconnection of national gas transport systems sits alongside our commitments to compete projects that are essential for Europe, such as Nabucco, AGRI or the Pan European Oil Pipeline.”

The Romanian Prime Minister added that the interconnection of Romania’s and Hungary’s gas networks was an opportunity to develop the AGRi project. He said that in the AGRI project, designed to carry natural liquefied gas from the Caspian Sea area into Europe, each of the 4 states involved – Azerbaijan, Georgia, Romania and Hungary, will have a 25% participation share.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said that Romania and Hungary were key countries in Central Europe.

“Fractured gas supply renders everyone vulnerable. If we lack development in this region, the whole of Europe will lack development. Central Europe, from Poland to Romania, remains the region with the highest degree of development, as was the case before the economic crisis. The pipeline’s initial transport capacity is 1.7 billion cubic meters per year. This is expected to rise to 4.4 billion cubic meters per year, at the most.” said Viktor Orban.


The Arad-Szeged pipeline stretches 109 km. 62 of them cross Romanian territory. The project’s value stands at about 68 million euros. A delegation of Russian giant Gazprom, led by CEO Alexei Miller, has visited Bucharest this week.

A proposal was signed on this occasion, regarding the prospective technical and economic study on the South Stream gas pipeline crossing the Romanian territory.

The pipeline, whose construction is set to begin in 2013, is expected to deliver Russian gas to Eastern Europe, bypassing Ukraine. The pipeline vies against the EU-backed Nabucco project, which will provide Europe with natural gas from the Caspian region and the Middle East.