Hungary: Fire at fuel refinery plant, farmers might run into gas shortages
The harvest season is approaching and fuel shortages continue.
RTL Klub and 444.hu reported in the beginning of June that a threat of impending gas shortages will loom over Hungary this summer. According to 444.hu, both from a legal as well as from an economic perspective the question now is this: How long can the government maintain its consumer price cap on automotive fuel?
As seasonal works continue in agriculture and farmers are preparing for the harvest season in June, minor fuel shortages continue to plague Hungary’s gas stations. Ottó Grád, Secretary-General of the industrial union Hungarian Petroleum Alliance has stated to the press that the reason for the continued supply shortages is that many companies do not ship to Hungary now due to the governmental price cap on fuel.
Mr. Grád also added that by the end of summer, there might be long queues at gas stations.
To make things worse, the potential gas shortage that farmers now face might have just been exacerbated by the fact that on Tuesday, a fire broke out at one of the refinery plants of MOL, Hungary’s multinational petrol corporation. Although according to the press release, the fire at the Atmospheric and Vacuum Distillation-2 (AV-2) plant of the Danube Refinery in Százhalombatta was small and “no personal injuries or environmental damage occurred,” the outage due to the fire might reduce MOL’s fuel processing capacity by 8 thousand metric tons per day.
Side note: The government extended the price cap on fuel (together with the price cap on food). More in the Newsflash, see bellow.
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In other news,
Serbia Newsflash, Week 24, 2022
High raspberry and potato prices, Montenegro depending on Serbia for food, organc winemaking with EU support, and a wheat yield that is not great, not terrible - the week in Serbian agriculture
Hungary Newsflash, Week 24, 2022
Price cap policies extended again, the rising prices of agricultural products, the fallout of the "tax on extra profits," and increasing export figures of farming products - the week in Hungarian agriculture
Photo credit: Cover picture by Globetrotter19 | Wikimedia, shared under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Per the request of the copyright holder, the content is distributed under the same license here.
