Hungarian President Katalin Novak said on Wednesday after a meeting with Romanian President Klaus Iohannis that Hungary is “signalling” its intention to buy more gas from Romania to reduce its dependence on Russia, and argued that exploitation projects such as Neptun Deep have financial to be supported by the European Union.

Asked by reporters if Hungary is negotiating with Romania to buy gas from Neptun Deep, the Hungarian president said that the Romanian project “is a new opportunity that is opening up” for his country to diversify its supply sources, Agerpres reports.

“I am glad that this investment has started. I believe that it would be good if this investment was supported by European funds. I signal Hungary’s intention to buy even more gas, because in this way we could further diversify our current energy resources and reduce our dependence on Russia. We are conducting discussions on this topic,” Katalin Novak said.

President Klaus Iohannis stated that “Romania can become a partner and a suitable energy supplier for Hungary.”

“Romania has natural gas resources on land, but recently important resources have also been found in the territorial waters zone, the coastal zone. The investment is planned to be carried out by an association of two companies, European and Romanian. I don’t want to name them, but there is progress and we expect this resource to be usable in the near future. In this case, it is quite obvious that Romania can become a partner and a suitable supplier of energy for Hungary, and I think that would be very good, because both Hungary and Romania and all of Europe want to disconnect from Russian resources. We want to have other sources of energy. Of course, in detail these issues are decided on a commercial basis, there are companies that will exploit, companies that transport, companies that import, but for these things to work very well, we need a good relationship between our economies and, in particular, good physical relationship, and I understood that there is a desire on both sides to take decisive steps in this direction. So, this is a very good opportunity for Romania and Hungary to become strategic partners also in the field of energy,” said Iohannis.