Poland has secured its supply of natural gas and coal for the coming winter heating season, the country's largest oil and gas firm and a senior politician from the ruling Polish party said on Friday.
Polish energy firm PGNiG said in a statement on Friday that it has secured its gas supply for the 2022/2023 heating season and will utilize 100% of the capacity on the new Baltic Pipe Project expected to start operations on October 1. The Baltic Pipe will carry gas produced offshore Norway to demand centers in Poland.
In recent weeks, PGNiG has secured additional gas supplies from companies operating on the Norwegian Continental Shelf. As a result of those additional supply contracts, in addition to domestic production and LNG imports, the company will be able to meet all the demand from its customers this winter, PGNiG said.
Poland was among the first EU member states to have its pipeline gas supply from Russia cut off entirely at the end of April after refusing to pay in rubles for Russian gas as Putin had ordered.
At the end of last month, a gas interconnector between Poland and Slovakia entered into operation, aiming to ensure affordable supplies and diversify supply routes.
"The project aims to decrease the EU countries' dependence on a single natural gas supplier, open access to new supply sources to Central-Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, facilitate the market between Northern and Southern Europe and increase the integration and coordination of regional gas markets," the European Commission said at the time.
Poland has also secured its coal supply for the short term by boosting domestic production and importing coal from the United States, Colombia, Tanzania, South Africa, Australia, and Indonesia, Krzysztof Sobolewski, secretary general of the ruling Law and Justice party in Poland, told the Polish press agency, PAP, in an interview on Friday.
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