Poland Copes with Less Russian Gas: PGNiG
Poland is consuming historically high volumes of gas, said state-run major gas supplier PGNiG's vice president of sales Maciej Wozniak March 1, giving no indication of any supply or import difficulties.
According to its preliminary data, PGNiG sold over 78mn m3 gas on February 28. It said that represented roughly two-thirds of the gas load of a single LNG cargo from Qatar.
"We estimate that the gas demand of the entire Polish market in the last day [February 28] exceeded 81mn m3," said PGNiG. For comparison's sake, that's about one-fifth of the gas expected to be consumed in Great Britain on March 1.
"PGNiG is well prepared for a record demand for gas," the company added: "We have reserved capacity at national and cross-border gas pipelines at an appropriate level, and gas stocks fill almost 47% of gas storage, higher than this time last year."
It noted that it is "less and less dependent" on "expensive" Russian gas imports. PGNiG said that, whereas gas imports to Poland in 2015 were 90% supplied by Gazprom, preliminary 2017 data show that figure has declined to about 70%. "In 2017, we bought from Gazprom about 1.5bn m3 gas less than in 2015. These deliveries have been successfully replaced with, among others, by LNG imports," it said.