Insufficient demand for enlarging Romania-Hungary gas interconnector

There is not enough demand for increasing the capacity of the gas interconnector between Romania and Hungary along the BRUA route from 1.75 billion cubic meters per year to 4.4 billion cubic meters per year.

Romanian and Hungarian natural gas transport system operators Transgaz and FGSZ have reached this conclusion after an open tender for allocating the additional transport capacity, Profit.ro reported.

Such tenders, by which bidders secure transfer capacities, are organized ahead of any gas transport projects to assess its feasibility.

The tender for the enlargement of the Romania-Hungary interconnector, to serve BRUA 2 route supposed to link the Black Sea offshore projects with Central Europe, was launched in 2017.

The results reflect the uncertainties related to Romania's offshore gas projects in the Black Sea, delayed due to regulatory changes.

Although insufficient for justifying the investment, the capacity allocations on the Romania-Hungary direction were a few orders of magnitude larger than those on the reverse direction, of importing gas from Hungary to Romania.

This was somehow surprising, since, last year, more than half of the total Romanian gas imports (of Russian origin) came from Hungary.

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