Poland Notifies Gazprom of Plan to End Supply Contract
Polish state PGNiG has followed through on its long-stated intention to stop importing gas from Russia as soon as it can, giving Russia’s Gazprom the obligatory three years' notice that it will not extend the contract after its expiry on December 31, 2022.
“In line with the Republic of Poland’s aspiration to achieve security of energy supplies and seeking to deliver the PGNiG Group’s current strategy, over the past four years we have taken a number of important steps to diversify the sources of natural gas supply to Poland,” PGNiG CEO Piotr Wozniak said November 15. “We have concluded long-term LNG supply contracts and have been acquiring natural gas deposits on the Norwegian Continental Shelf, which, combined with the activities of the transmission system operator to expand the gas pipeline system, makes it possible for us to terminate the Yamal Contract on the originally set date.”
PGNiG has been importing steadily more gas at its 5bn m3/yr Swinoujscie LNG terminal, enabling it to cut Russian purchases by 21% in the first nine months of this year to 6.29bn m3. It plans to expand the facility’s capacity by 50% by 2021, and build a second 4bn m3/yr import terminal in Gdansk. Both investments are supported by the EU.
The contract with Gazprom was signed in 1996, when relations between the two were different. Poland had hoped that the Yamal Europe pipeline would be doubled across its territory, but in the end Gazprom decided a direct line to Germany would be better and so built the first Nord Stream pipeline.