Hungarian Economics Minister Janos Koka called for speeding up the construction of gas storage facilities during a meeting of the parliament's economic committee Thursday.

Koka said the construction of a storage facility with total capacity of 1.2 billion cubic meters should be completed by 2010 instead of the original deadline of 2012.

Koka called on the parliament to approve the change before the end of the spring term.

Hungary's current gas storage capacity is 3.6 billion cubic meters, which means around a quarter of the annual 14 billion national gas consumption can be stored.

Natural gas represents 45 percent of Hungary's overall national energy consumption and 90 percent of the public's energy consumption.

As much as 70 percent of Hungary's gas consumption is supplied from Russia.