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The way out of the energy crisis can only be market-based, and sooner or later, we will have to return to market norms, the Hungarian oil and gas company MOL Group CEO said at the company’s general assembly in Budapest on Thursday.
Zsolt Hernádi stressed that governments and international institutions must accept that, in the long run, the needed balance can only be maintained based on market standards.
At the group level, last year, the company faced an extra 2.2 billion dollars in government divestments in the countries where it is present. This money is needed, the countries of Central Europe have been hit extra hard by the energy price boom, but these levels are unsustainable,” the CEO explained.
At the same time, he stressed that MOL has come out of every crisis stronger than before, and the company is much stronger now than before the crisis. The company closed the previous year with its best financial results ever.
Commenting on the war in Ukraine, the CEO said that a year on, it is already clear that
the Western world’s primary tool has been the creation of a sanctions regime.
He pointed out that 7 out of 10 EU sanctions applied to energy. MOL has to secure supplies to the region while meeting the international community’s requirements, he said.
Zsolt Hernádi said that diversifying the energy supply was one of the most critical objectives. He added that while many interconnections have been built to ensure the security of energy supply, Hungary’s and the region’s dependence on gas and oil came from a time when diversification was impossible. Oil refineries were built on this, and these technologies cannot be changed overnight, he said.
He described the EU exemption for oil transported by pipeline as a significant achievement. At the same time, he stressed that MOL continues to blend non-Russian crude oil at the Százhalombatta refinery and that work has also started at the Bratislava refinery. The first shipment of crude oil from MOL’s own field in Azerbaijan arrived on Thursday morning, he said.
Featured photo via molgroup.info
