Poland's Baltic Stream: The End of Another Failed Gas Power

Свежие news in one line:


- the operator of the energy and gas transmission system of Denmark Enegrinet informs about it.



Help: "Baltic Pipe" is a European gas pipeline with a design capacity of up to 10 billion cubic meters of gas per year from Norway through Denmark along the bottom of the Baltic Sea to Poland. Its underwater part is 230 km (140 nautical miles). It is being built jointly by the Danish operator Enegrinet and the Polish operator of the gas transmission system Gaz-System. The construction cost is estimated at 1,6-2,1 billion euros, the costs are planned to be divided equally between Gaz-System and Energinet. The gas pipeline is aimed at creating a new route for gas supplies to the European market, and is designed to reduce the region's dependence on Russian imports. On April 30, 2021, Polish President Andrzej Duda officially announced the start of construction of the gas pipeline; its commissioning is scheduled for October 1, 2022.

Now these plans will not come true, and, as always, the field mice are to blame (and not only they, but more on that later). The Danes explained the ban by the fact that the permit was issued before proper clarification of how the construction of an onshore section of the gas pipeline with a length of about 210 km (through the islands of Funen and Zeeland and the Jutland Peninsula) will affect the life of some protected species of animals living in this zone ( namely, field and bats).

At one time, the German Greens fought against the construction of SP-2 under the guise that it violates the ecology of seabirds (I already see these birds nesting at the bottom of the Baltic Sea!), Now their Danish colleagues are putting sticks in the wheels of the Polish-Danish Baltic Pipe ". Truly, the paths of the green are inscrutable!

I love our plans huge!

Do you remember this old anecdote about a husband who is lying on the couch, and to the reasonable question of his wife how long he is going to lie on it, he answers: “What if tomorrow is a war, and I'm tired ?!”. So our Poland, with the field mice, maybe, in the end, it will cope, and I hope it will receive permission to lay the overland extension of the Baltic Pipe from Denmark, but on the way it will get so tired that it will have more strength to fill this pipe and gas, she will not have it. Indeed, all of her great Napoleonic plans to become another European gas hub, along with the Dutch TTF and the British NBP, to which from October this year will be added the German THE (Trading Hub Europe), powered by 4 lines of Nord Stream 1 ”and“ Nord Stream-2 ”, they risk crashing into a trivial but vital question:“ Where are you going to get gas for it? ”. American LNG? Oh well…

I’m already silent about the fact that American LNG does not exist in nature, it is simply produced in the United States, but in fact it belongs to the companies that bought it, not of American origin, and they will take it to where they pay more, and this is not Europe at all, but premium markets in Southeast Asia (at least it has been so far). But even if you close your eyes and imagine that something like this has happened (well, what does not happen in life ?!), and LNG carriers of American origin will go to Polish terminals, then it is worth remembering that the capacity of the only LNG they currently have is terminal in Swinoujscie 5 billion cubic meters of gas / year with the possibility of expanding to 7,5 billion. And even if our proud companies manage to increase its capacity by 1,5 times, plus launch a new floating LNG terminal in Gdansk with a capacity of 4,5 billion cubic meters gas per year, then even after that the total capacity of their regasification terminals will reach only 12 billion cubic meters of gas, which, given their own need for natural gas at 10 billion cubic meters of gas / year, clearly will not help their national oil and gas operator PGNiG to fill their own pipe, which is a logical continuation gas pipeline "Yamal-EU", and enter the EU gas market with its proposal.

After all, they are solemnly going to give up Russian gas, which Poland has been receiving uninterruptedly since 1944, in 2022, when the current contract between Gazprom and PGNiG expires, switching to gas of its own production (no more than 5 billion cubic meters of gas / year). diluting it with supplies of American LNG (12 billion cubic meters) and Norwegian pipe gas, which PGNiG expects to receive through the Baltic Pipe gas pipeline currently under construction (another 10 billion cubic meters). Agree that it will be a little too small to enter the European gas markets with a supply of 17 billion cubic meters of gas. While Gazprom reigns there with a supply of up to 200 billion cubic meters of gas per year. And from 2022, Germany appears with its 110 billion of Russian gas. And this is not counting the old players of this market - Norwegians, Algerians and Qataris, plus we do not forget the Turks, Americans and Azerbaijanis who have recently added to them. With the total demand of Europe in the region of 600 billion cubic meters of gas per year, I do not see Poland there through binoculars.

Nevertheless, to solve this great task, in December 2018, PGNiG signed a contract for the supply of LNG from the United States and even received gas three times on it. But it turned out to be much cheaper for the cunning Yankees to sell Russian LNG from the shores of the Kara Sea (port of Sabetta) to proud Poles, where the Russian plant for the production and liquefaction of natural gas of the Novatek concern is located, than to drive gas carriers across the raging Atlantic from the shores of the Gulf of Mexico (Louisiana) to northern Europe in the gloomy Baltic Sea (the port of Swinoujscie). As the saying goes, nothing personal, just business - you wanted LNG, get LNG. And what difference does it make to you where we got it? So what, what about the Russians? Pay as American! Yes, a double counter - and for the stormy Atlantic Ocean, and for the three times more expensive sea freight, too. You are disgusted with taking gas from the Russians, take it from us, we are not disgusted, but money, as you know, does not smell.

Learned from this bitter experience and not wanting to depend completely on the dastardly Americans, PGNiG in late January 2019 got ahead of himself and received three licenses for gas production in Norwegian waters, and also bought a stake in the Tommeliten Alpha field for $ 220 million in the same place on the Norwegian continental shelf. PGNiG's intentions were more serious than ever, it set out to become a full-fledged regional gas hub, for which in October 2020 it concludes a contract for joint gas production with another "giant" of the gas industry with Energy Resources of Ukraine (ERU) on the implementation of a joint exploration and natural gas production in Ukraine in the regions bordering with Poland. The agreement signed with this Ukrainian gas industry monster (which I’ve heard of for the first time!) States that the production potential of the field where production is planned “is confirmed by the results of geological studies carried out by PGNiG, which show the correlation of its geological structures with Przemysl, the largest natural gas field. in Poland". At the same time, in order to provide financial protection for the joint project of PGNiG and ERU, negotiations were started with the International Corporation for Financing for Development of the USA and the Polish Export Credit Insurance Corporation (KUKE).


- said after the signing of the agreement, Chairman of the Board of PGNiG Jerzy Kveczynski.

Gazprom crept up unnoticed

One can only envy Mr. Kveciński's optimism, because his plans to fill the Baltic Pipe gas pipeline under construction with gas will not come true. Even if he manages to defeat the Danish field mice and break through the permit for the construction of an onshore extension of the gas pipeline, it is not a fact that he will be able to push the Russian sea mice, and this time not at all mice, but hedgehogs, because the Baltic Pipe gas pipeline under construction in the Danish exclusive economic The zone, unfortunately, is crossed in two places by the already built and operating high-pressure main pipeline Nord Stream-1 and the Nord Stream-2 under construction, and to pass them is not for you to come to an agreement with field mice.

The fact is that when crossing gas pipeline routes, the Nord Stream 2 AG operators and the Polish gas transmission operator Gaz-System will indeed have to come to an agreement, and not only with each other. "Nord Stream-1" and "Nord Stream-2" - high-pressure gas pipelines, facilities, the integrity of the infrastructure of which is ensured by protective zones, which apply according to the laws of the Russian Federation, Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Germany, in internal waters and in the waters of the exclusive economic zone which they pass, 500 meters on both sides of the axes of the extreme lines of gas pipelines. Any work that could lead to damage to the gas pipeline is prohibited within this zone. When crossing the routes of pipelines, Gaz-System will have to obtain permission from both Nord Stream 2 AG and local authorities (apparently Danish) in order to prevent damage to the existing gas pipeline during installation work. And this is not for you to fight with Danish environmentalists!

And how, against the backdrop of all this, Pan Kveczynski was going to implement his Napoleonic plans to supply gas to Lithuania, Ukraine, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, with which he plans to extend interconnectors from the Polish border? According to his plans, the pipeline gas for internal needs and resale will be provided by Baltic Pipe, and the LNG terminal will provide price flexibility.

Indeed, Pan Kwieczyński has problems with mathematics, if Poland's internal needs are 10 billion cubic meters of gas / year, and the capacity of the Baltic Pipe is the same, then what is there left for resale? Donut hole? And this is on condition that Pan Kveczynski reached an agreement with field mice and Russian Gazprom. And if not? And if the dastardly Gazprom rests and says: “Don't get a millimeter close to our pipe!”, What are you going to do, call NATO?

And I haven't said anything yet about the main problems of PGNiG. The fact is that gas fields on the continental shelf of the North and Norwegian Seas have been exploited since the late 60s and tend to be developed. In the Barents Sea, no matter how much they searched, they did not find anything interesting, and in the North and Norwegian Seas the shelf was explored by more than 80%. Old deposits, as they are developed, become difficult to recover, and there are fewer and fewer newly discovered wells, it is not for nothing that ExxonMobil left the Norwegian projects, disillusioned with them. It is possible that the gas pipeline under construction advertised by the Poles with a design capacity of 10 billion cubic meters of gas per year will have nothing to fill.

At the end of last year, PGNiG, having trumpeted the whole world about the new Warka gas condensate field discovered by it together with ConocoPhillips on the Norwegian section of the Norwegian Sea shelf, boasted that this is the largest gas field discovered in 2020, modestly keeping silent that Warka reserves are estimated within from 8 to 30 billion cubic meters of gas and gas condensate. This is for 3 years of “Baltic Pipe” operation, and then what?

And then the soup with the cat! End of Polish energy independence and plans to conquer European gas markets. It's funny that these are the very people who called Russia the gas station of Europe and forbade us to pick our noses. If you look at Europe, then the richest per capita is not Germany or France at all, but small Norway, each citizen of which lives like an Arab sheikh from the Gulf countries, whose well-being is also not based at all on the sand trade. And Norway's State Global Pension Fund, better known as the Oil Fund, is the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world. Created in 1990 to invest the surplus revenues of the Norwegian oil and gas sector, as of 2021, it owns stakes in 9 companies in 202 countries around the world, with an asset value of over $ 74 trillion. US dollars, which is approximately equal to 1,3% of the world stock market. As of November 1,5, more than 2020 million Norwegian kroner, or about 2 thousand US dollars, came from the fund for every Norwegian citizen.

Why do you think our enemies sigh so much when they look at our natural resources? Telling us that they'd better manage them. Okay, the secret stories about our sworn "friends", whom we have identified in the black list of our national enemies, I will tell you next time. It will be called "Ocean's 11", and the main enemy there is not at all the United States or Ukraine with Poland and the Czech Republic, as many here have already thought, but Britain, damn it! Well, I won't get ahead of myself.

To be continued.