• By
  • Marcin Sobczyk

It was almost exactly one year ago that Poland began talking with Russia to increase deliveries of natural gas after a Russian-Ukrainian gas dispute eliminated one Russian-linked trader from the market.

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Gazprom’s headquarters in Moscow

Unlike mainland Russia’s neighbors Ukraine and Belarus, Poland pays a good buck for its gas — the price is the regular Western European average that Russia sees at $325 per 1,000 cubic meters this year.

So if you sell at a profit, you will quite quickly agree to sell more, right? Wrong. Russia wants to kill several birds with one stone and Poland wants to keep some of those birds alive, so no deal yet.

As a result, Poland stopped receiving some of its gas imports from the east and has had to warn large industrial customers several times their supplies could be cut.

Getting most of its gas imports from its former occupier and with large gas links to other European Union states only under construction, Poland still relies on Russia to keep it fully supplied.

To achieve permanent security of supplies, the country needs a new deal with higher volumes of gas. But over the past year, it managed to convince Russia to supply higher volumes under the current contract or bought more gas from Russia under spot deals.

The country’s gas company PGNiG produces more domestic gas, draws around 10 million cubic meters of gas a day from storage facilities where it now has 600 million cubic meters, imports from the west and buys more gas from Russia under spot contracts.

The government has recently approved PGNiG tapping Poland’s strategic gas reserves, estimated at 400 million cubic meters, to give the company more options. Analysts say PGNiG could resort to the state reserves if the big freeze returns — but it’s not here yet.

In short, the country is likely to be supplied until March even if Poland fails to get a new deal with Russia that would give it higher supplies.

The Russian view of this? Poland will run out of gas any day now. “The strategic reserves are at 400 million cubic meters only. Because Poland’s consumption is at 50-55 million cubic meters of gas a day, those reserves will be enough for only seven-eight days,” says daily Kommersant. To arrive at that conclusion, the newspaper chose to conveniently ignore the fact that PGNiG still has its own reserves, and that it produces gas on its own apart from buying it from Gazprom.

Another Russian daily Vremya Novostei, on the other hand, compares apples with oranges in their report on the Polish gas woes.

“Just one unusual period of colder weather and PGNiG will have to resort to the strategic reserves of 400 million cubic meters. According to the Polish deputy prime minister, there’s enough gas for supplies to remain uninterrupted until April — the end of the heating season.

“But not even Poles themselves fully trust that. At the end of December, PGNiG admitted that with temperatures remaining normal, the gas in storage facilities will last until February,” the daily said.

What the paper refers to in the first sentence is the strategic reserve of 400 million cubic meters. In the second, it talks about all of the reserves PGNiG has access to (1 billion cubic meters). In the fourth, it talks about PGNiG’s own reserves of 600 million cubic meters.

And in the third sentence, it just talks out of its hat.