Hungary rejects Ukrainian fuel storage project, says it will not proceed under current government

BUDAPEST, September 21. /TASS/. Hungary will not implement a memorandum of understanding on construction of a petroleum products storage for Ukraine on its territory, Prime Minister Peter Magyar said.

"The storage for which MOL signed the memorandum of understanding will not be built either on the Hungarian-Ukrainian border or anywhere else. If you read the recently published statement, it says that this is only a theoretical possibility. Even if it came to implementation, it will take years. But I want to state here and now: as long as the government of the Tisza party is in power, this will not happen," Magyar told the Hungarian parliament.

He was commenting a Naftogaz Telegram post that quoted company head Sergey Fedorenko as saying that this project "will increase reliability of fuel supplies for Ukrainian consumers in the future."

The memorandum was allegedly signed at a meeting of the Carpathian Eight regional association with the participation of Ukraine and several Eastern and Central European countries.

"I would like to clarify, because the Ukrainian press has made the claim that Hungary is a member of the Carpathian Eight. Well, it’s not part of it. We were invited, but we did not go, and there were good reasons for that," Magyar said as broadcast by M1 TV channel.

He also said that it was MOL that initiated negotiations on this issue with Ukraine and the United States with the approval of the previous Hungarian government headed by Viktor Orban. However, the matter did not progress beyond the signing of the memorandum of understanding, and no other agreements were signed. Magyar said that on September 20, he discussed this issue with MOL head Zsolt Hernadi. The prime minister made it clear that from now on he expects him to take actions coordinated with the new government of the country, since the state still owns a quarter of this company.