BAKU, Azerbaijan, June 19. Hungary will be happy to welcome first gas deliveries from Azerbaijan this year, Peter Szijjarto, Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, said speaking at the summer session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), TurkicWorld reports.

"We are a landlocked country, in the heart of Europe without any significant natural resources when it comes to oil and gas, therefore, we are dependent on imports. We have concluded very successful negotiations with Azerbaijan on starting the gas deliveries from Azerbaijan to Hungary. We have a common political view that we build it up to a contract reaching one or 2 billion cubic meters annually. But why we cannot perform this contract now is the lack of infrastructure in the southeastern part of Europe. Everybody should understand that the issue of energy supply has nothing to do with politics, ideology, political taste. This is an issue of physical reality, and as long as gas can be delivered in pipeline and not in a backpack, the infrastructure determines the possibilities of the countries given by geography," he said.

The minister expressed hope that together with Romanian, Bulgarian, Turkish and Serbian friends, ad well as Greece and Slovakia, it will be possible to upgrade the regional energy infrastructure in a way that the country can add alternative sources to it energy supply.

"So, we will be happy to welcome the first deliveries this year from Azerbaijan," Peter Szijjarto added.

Azerbaijan started gas deliveries to Europe via the Southern Gas Corridor on December 31, 2020. The Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), the European leg of the Corridor, has an initial capacity of 10 billion cubic meters per year, expandable to 20 billion cubic meters.