Gas crisis reduces Hungary commercial gas stores to 2.3bn cubic metres
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| Budapest, January 20, 2009 (MTI-ECONEWS) - Hungary's commercial gas stores have been reduced from 3.2bn to 2.3bn cubic metres since they were tapped to meet domestic demand after gas deliveries from Ukraine were halted, Istvan Kutas, the spokesman for E.ON Folgaz Storage, the Hungarian gas storage unit of German utilities giant E.ON, told MTI on Tuesday. |
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The amount of gas that can be released from the stores has a technical limit of 53.5m cubic metres a day, Mr Kutas said. It was only necessary to take out well under 50m cubic metres per day over the past several days, he added.
E.ON will start refilling its commercial reserves when the heating season ends. The company has storage capacity for 3.79bn cubic metres of gas, but it is spending about HUF 30bn to raise this to 4.4bn cubic metres by August 2009.
In addition to the commercial stores, Hungary has a 500m-cubic-metre strategic reserve which has not been tapped so far.
A law passed in 2006 requires Hungary to build a 1.2bn-cubic-metre gas reserve -- big enough to meet domestic demand for 45 days -- by 2010.
Hungary consumes 13bn-14bn cubic metres of gas a year.
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