Budapest - Hungary's minister responsible for energy, Csaba Molnar, said Friday that the pressure in pipelines bringing Russian gas into Hungary from Ukraine had dropped slightly at 4 pm.

This came shortly after Ukraine's gas distributor informed its Hungarian counterpart that it would reduce daily delivery of gas to Hungary from 37 to 32 million cubic metres.

The Hungarian government accused Ukraine of breaking the terms of its supply contract.

With temperatures well below freezing across the country, Hungary is currently burning 66 million cubic metres of natural gas per day, the storage company E. ON said.

Molnar told reporters that the drop in supply would not be felt as Hungary has 3.6 billion cubic metres of gas in storage that can be fed into the national gas network at a rate of 51.5 million cubic metres per day.

Hungary uses 13 to 14 billion cubic metres of natural gas a year, of which over three-quarters comes from Russia via Ukraine.

"So far there has been no need to restrict the use of gas by consumers, but it is quite probable that a crisis situation may develop," said Molnar.

The Hungarian government set up a crisis committee to deal with the issue.

Hungary has expanded its gas storage infrastructure since Russia cut supplies to the Ukraine in a similar dispute in 2006. (dpa)