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Poland opts for LNG from US to ease dependence on Russia
WARSAW, Oct 18, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Poland’s state-run gas firm PGNiG said on
Wednesday that it had sealed an unprecedented 20-year deal for liquefied
natural gas (LNG) deliveries from the United States in a bid to ease its
heavy dependence on Russian supplies.
“Today we can fulfil our efforts to improve the sovereignty, security and
competitiveness of our gas sector,” Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz
Morawiecki told reporters in Warsaw on Wednesday, adding that the deal will
help reduce Poland’s reliance on Kremlin-backed Russian energy giant Gazprom.
US ambassador to Poland Georgette Mosbacher told reporters the contract
was part of a drive by the Trump administration to establish the United
States as the “world’s largest LNG exporter”.
The deal concluded by the Polish Oil and Gas Company (PGNiG) with two
subsidiaries of the US-based Venture Global LNG will provide Poland with up
to two million tonnes of liquefied natural gas per year, a PGNiG company
statement said.
Once regasified, it is the equivalent of 2.7 billion cubic metres of
natural gas.
The deal with the US firm is due to take full effect in 2022, just as
Warsaw’s current contract with Gazprom for 10 billion cubic metres of natural
gas per year is set to end.
Poland currently relies on the Russian giant for about two-thirds of its
gas, with domestic supplies accounting for around a quarter of its market.
Warsaw is also eyeing imports from Norway and Qatar.
A value for the Venture Global LNG contract, initially agreed in June, was
not provided.
Gazprom spokesman Sergey Kupriyanov told Russia’s TASS on Wednesday that
the company’s “supplies to Poland, amid all the rhetoric against Russian gas,
grew by almost 10 percent this year.”
Russia’s deputy energy minister Anatoly Yanovsky also told TASS that no
one can beat the price of Russian gas on the European market.
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“Our commodity is a single option. Neither the US, nor Qatar, nor Norway,
nor Africa can supply such volumes for a low price like that,” he told TASS.
But Poland’s new deal with the US comes a day after PGNiG filed a
complaint with the EU’s top court against a controversial deal by the
European Commission to settle an anti-trust case against Gazprom.
The deal struck in May allowed Gazprom to avoid billions in fines after
eight eastern EU members including Poland claimed the Russian giant had
abused its dominant position as a gas provider in their region.
The settlement with the EU came after Gazprom agreed to benchmark prices
in eastern Europe against prices in the rest of Europe, and to drop clauses
restricting the re-export of gas by clients.
But PGNiG alleged in a Tuesday statement that Gazprom has “not ceased to
violate EU law” and that the settlement has allowed it to “continue to
inflate gas prices to its recipients in Central and Eastern Europe.”
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