Hungary is expected on Tuesday to agree a $500-million oil supply deal with the United States during the visit of U.S. Vice President JD Vance in Budapest, a source with knowledge of the plan told Bloomberg.
Vance arrived in Hungary’s capital city earlier on Tuesday, just days ahead of the general election in the country on April 12, in which Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is badly trailing in poll numbers.
The expected Hungary-U.S. deal would envisage Hungarian energy company MOL agreeing to buy about 500,000 tons of U.S. oil for about $500 million, according to Bloomberg’s source.
The Trump Administration has often praised Orban, whose social and energy policies often clash with the official policies of the EU, of which Hungary is a part.
Hungary, whose top officials have remained in contact with Russia’s leadership, including Vladimir Putin, has continuously clashed with its fellow EU member states over plans to ditch Russian gas by 2027 and cut off oil supply from Moscow as soon as possible.
In the upcoming election, both Trump and Putin hope that Orban would win despite trailing 16 percentage points behind the party of the opposition leader Peter Magyar, who has promised to bring Hungary back into the EU shared values and policies and who has blamed Orban and his party for being Moscow’s puppets.
Hungary has recently raised the oil supply issue again after Russian oil flows via the Druzhba pipeline were suspended at the end of January following an attack on the infrastructure in Ukraine.
At the end of January, Druzhba was damaged in what Ukraine said was a Russian drone attack.
Hungary last month moved to phase out natural gas supplies to Ukraine in the third quarter, in a Hungarian move to retaliate for the halted oil flows from Russia via the Druzhba pipeline.
Hungary has banned its gas operator from holding auctions for supply to Ukraine in the third quarter, after Orban has threatened several times that Budapest would cut off gas deliveries to Ukraine until oil flows via the Druzhba pipeline resume.
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com
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