Poland is ready to ensure its energy supplies without importing gas from Russia due to the diversification of supplies and increasing LNG imports, Piotr Woźniak, the CEO of Poland’s state gas and oil company PGNiG has said.
Speaking in an interview with Polish daily Dziennik Gazeta Prawna, the PGNiG CEO said that the company had “done its homework” when it comes to diversifying gas imports, noting that PGNiG has signed contracts with US suppliers to buy LNG at a price which is 20-30 per cent lower than the price of gas from Russian energy giant Gazprom.
“From 2022, via the Baltic Pipe, with a planned capacity of 10 billion cubic metres, we will import around 2.5 million cubic metres natural gas from our own extraction on the Norwegian Continental Shelf,” wrote Polandin, quoting Mr Woźniak. “We will buy the rest of the fuel from the Norwegian market,” he added.
According to Mr Woźniak, new investments in the energy sector, such as the construction of a new gas-steam power unit in Warsaw with an annual capacity of 0.5 billion cubic metres of gas or the Dolna Odra power plant with a projected annual gas usage of one billion cubic metres, will be the drivers of the increase of gas consumption in Poland which he expects to grow by five billion cubic metres in the next few years, from the current annual usage of 18 billion.
On September 4, the Polish government announced that it did not plan to renew the Yamal Contract (the current Russian-Polish gas agreement), which expires in December 2022. If Poland wants to pull out from the deal, the government has to announce that it will do so by the end of 2019.
