Steven N.Energy market expert József Balogh said that Hungarian oil and gas company MOL’s extra income of US $4 million a day mostly derives from the use of Russian crude oil.
The expert said that Hungary’s daily oil consumption is about 180,000 barrels, of which Russian oil makes up about 65%.
Balogh told RTL News that the fixed official price of 480 Ft. ($1.29) per liter causes significant additional costs for the oil company.
However, energy experts who talked to napi.hu believe that MOL may be getting Russian oil at a discount. Two oil industry experts told the news site that, based on the margins of previous years, they estimate that at certain times the Hungarian national oil company could have purchased Russian oil at a discount of up to 20-30%.
With discounted prices and high margins, they say it is understandable why the Hungarian oil company and the Orbán government are against the proposed EU embargo on Russian oil.
According to an expert interviewed by napi.hu, converting MOL’s refineries could be a major loss for the company, but does not pose any technological difficulties for them. This is all the more so because 30-35% of MOL’s oil already comes from Arabic countries. [Index]
