WARSAW: Poland will invest ¤1.1bn ($1.4bn) as of 2014 in a gas pipeline network linking a new Baltic LNG terminal at Swinoujscie to its Czech, Slovak and Ukrainian neighbours, Poland’s state-owned gas transmission monopoly Gaz-System said yesterday.
“In five years we want to build 940km of natural gas pipelines to transfer gas from Swinoujscie up to the Czech, Slovak and Ukrainian borders,” Gaz-System spokeswoman Malgorzata Polkowska said.
“The investment is worth 4.5 bn zloty (¤1.1bn, $1.4bn)” she added of the move, seen as key to boosting energy security by easing the region’s heavy dependence on natural gas pumped in from Soviet-era master Russia.
Gaz-System is building Poland’s first liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal which is to come online in June 2014 with an annual capacity of 7.5 billion cubic metres of gas.
“The new north-south network will allow the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Ukraine to use gas delivered to Swinoujscie,” Polkowska said.
European Union funding will co-finance about a third of the project, she said.
Plans also call for a pipeline from Swinoujscie to Lithuania, a former Soviet republic and EU member which is currently heavily dependent on Russian natural gas.
In 2014, Gaz-System plans to finish a five-year project covering 1,000 kilometres of pipelines connecting the Swinoujscie port LNG terminal to Czech and German gas transmission systems, all of which are worth a total ¤1.95bn.AFP
