Hungary seeks way to circumvent US sanctions against russian oil

He said this on Friday, 24 October, in an interview with Hungarian radio, according to Reuters, as reported by European Pravda.

Orbán said that he had spoken with Hungarian oil and gas company MOL about the sanctions recently imposed by US President Donald Trump against Rosneft and Lukoil.

‘We are working on how to circumvent these sanctions,’ the Hungarian prime minister said without providing details.

As is well known, MOL's oil refineries in Hungary and Slovakia, with a total capacity of 14.2 million tonnes of oil per year, depend on russian oil transported via the Druzhba pipeline.

Last year, MOL faced supply problems when Ukraine imposed sanctions against Lukoil. At that time, the company concluded agreements to acquire ownership of the ‘affected’ volumes of oil at the border between Belarus and Ukraine in order to maintain supplies.

It should be noted that after Trump imposed sanctions on russian oil, Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski and Balázs Orbán, political director of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, engaged in a public dispute over russian oil, which Hungary does not want to stop buying.

Source: European Pravda