Poland Requests Capacity in Norwegian Link
Polish state-run gas company PGNiG has officially voiced a need for gas transmission capacity in a Norway-Denmark-Poland line in the first phase of the open season procedure, it said July 27.
The link, including the Baltic Pipe pipeline from Denmark to Poland, will enable annual supplies of about 10bn m³/yr to Poland. PGNiG expects that the transmission of gas using the link will be possible in late 2022 – which happens to coincide with the expiry date of its similarly-sized gas supply contract with Gazprom.
PGNiG CEO Piotr Wozniak said that connecting the pipelines by linking Norway, Denmark, and Poland "was the most important undertaking of this kind in our part of the continent, providing our recipients with a diversified gas supply on safe market conditions. We also plan to take part in the second phase of the procedure, which will start on September 5, 2017, and end with the signing of the final agreements on the volume of the assigned transmission capacity."
As well as supporting future pipelines, Poland has already built an LNG terminal, which gives it the option of buying gas on world markets, and which has already received gas from Qatar and the US, among others. It is also studying feasibility for a 2nd LNG import terminal that might open in the 2020s.
PGNiG has 18 exploration and production concessions in the Norwegian Continental Shelf, operating in five oil and natural gas fields: the Aker BP-operated Skarv gas field, plus Vilje, Morvin, Vale, and Gina Krog. The company's combined net equity resources are 78mn barrels of oil equivalent as of January 1, 2017, with net gas output forecast at 500mn m³ this year -- although PGNiG is aiming at eventual annual output of 2.5bn m³ from Norway.
It says that transmitting gas from Norway to Denmark and Poland "will increase the diversification of the raw material’s supply sources and contribute to the improvement of the gas market competitiveness in Poland and the rest of central and eastern Europe."
William Powell