Multinational energy company Shell inaugurated a filling station offering liquefied natural gas (LNG) in Szigetszentmiklos, next to the M0 motorway, its first in the region, Peter Szijjarto, the foreign minister, said on Thursday.
With the opening of the filling station, Shell has entered Hungary’s LNG vehicle fuel market and contributes to the achievement of the government’s emissions reduction targets, the foreign ministry cited Szijjarto as saying.
Szijjarto noted that road freight transport accounts for about 9 percent of greenhouse gas emissions globally, which could be reduced either by shifting to rail transport or using vehicle fuels with lower emissions. Using LNG in road freight transport reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 15-30 percent compared to normal fuels, so “it is a huge step towards reducing emissions globally,” Szijjarto said.
The minister noted that Shell was the oldest foreign player on the Hungarian vehicle fuel market and the first Western company with which Hungary signed a long-term gas purchase agreement. Under this contract, an annual 250 million cubic metres of gas is delivered to Hungary through an LNG port in Croatia, he added.
Istvan Kapitany, Global Executive Vice President at Shell, said carbon neutralisation was one of the main challenges the transport sector was facing and also one of the main objectives of his company’s strategy. “The new Hungarian filling station is an important member of Shell’s European LNG network, which supports the spread of LNG as a truck fuel in Hungary and in countries with significant freight traffic such as Austria, Czechia, Germany, Romania, Slovenia and Slovakia,” he said.
