Poland is looking to stop using Russian oil by the end of this year and place an embargo on Russian coal imports within two months' time, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on Wednesday.
Poland imports from Russia around 60 percent of the oil its refineries process, and its top refiner PKN Orlen has term contracts with Russia's oil firms Rosneft and Tatneft expiring at the end of 2022 and 2024, respectively.
"We will do everything to stop using Russian oil by the end of this year," the Polish Prime Minister Morawiecki said today, as carried by Reuters.
Poland is one of the European Union member states that has been warning for years that Russia uses its energy resources as a blackmail tool, and was one of the biggest opponents of the now-defunct Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline project. Germany halted all certifications for Nord Stream 2 after Russia recognized the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine, just before invading Ukraine.
Poland has been seeking for years to diversify its energy supplies away from Russia, and Polish energy firms have signed in recent years various deals for oil supply from Middle Eastern exporters and liquefied natural gas (LNG) cargoes from the United States.
Poland is also now in the camp of the EU countries calling for an EU-wide embargo on imports of Russian oil, coal, and gas. But many EU member states, including Germany, are against such an embargo, arguing that without Russian energy supply, Europe would plunge into a deep recession.
Last week, EU ministers discussed a possible embargo but failed to come to an agreement about whether to punish Putin with an oil import ban. Some small EU members, including Lithuania, pushed for an embargo, but the biggest economy, Germany, was against it.
Apart from Russian oil, Poland will look to stop using Russian coal, too. Poland targets this coming May as a deadline to impose a coal import embargo on Russia. Poland believes that it can procure coal from South Africa and Australia and prices wouldn't be more expensive.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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Tsvetana is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. More