Report: “Polish Government Close to Compromise on Shale Gas Regulations”

After six months of proceedings, Polish ministers working on new regulations for natural gas are close to reaching a compromise position.

Polish website rmf24.pl., quoting anonymous sources, reported that “several ministries are very close to a compromise concerning principles of taxing and state shares.”

The Ministry for Environment was to present the legal framework in June, however the formal presentation of the much-anticipated proposal on the regulation and taxation on hydrocarbons, which will cover Poland's shale gas industry, was delayed.

In July the Polish newspaper Dziennik reported, that the government was considered requiring a 40%  share in each concession and imposition of a royalty tax of upto 40% of tax.  The deputy minister of Environment called the reports a “mix of amateurism and incomplete information”.

At the end of August, Rzeczpospolita daily suggested that continuing differences among ministries were still too deep to reach a compromise quickly.

The new regulatory framework proposed new taxes and increasing share of revenues paid to regional coffers, establishing a mining and hydrocarbon regulator NOKE and a national fund that would reinvest a portion of tax proceeds to support education, science R&D and social spending.