Territorial losses after the First World War left Hungary poor in raw materials and energy sources, as most of the places where they had been found were outside its new borders. The shortage became even more threatening after the Second World War, with industrialization and associated urbanization. Though some new domestic coal and oil deposits were exploited, this could not meet a demand that was rising year by year.

One of the main goals of the Kádár regime, as it consolidated its power after the crushing of the 1956 Revolution, was to overcome the baneful energy shortage. The structure of energy consumption in the country at that time was 80 per cent coal and only 20 per cent hydrocarbons. The regime set out to alter that structure through intensified prospecting for hydrocarbons in Hungary. There were rewards. Some important gas fields were discovered between 1958 and 1975—enough to satisfy the fuel demands of the general public for twenty years. The state put a billion US dollars into building the infrastructure required.

But by the early 1970s, it was clear that Hungary’s own gas stocks would not be sufficient to satisfy the demand for fuel in the longer term. That and the worldwide oil-price explosion of 1973 persuaded the Comecon countries to build a joint long-distance pipeline, to deliver gas from Orenburg to the western borders of the Soviet Union. This investment made in 1975–9 was the prelude to the process by which Europe became dependent on Russia for much of its energy supplies, as it remains today.