2/26/19
Gargantuan tankers pull into this port on the Baltic Sea twice a month, ferrying liquid natural gas from producers in Qatar, Norway and, increasingly, the United States. The fuel will help light and heat millions of Polish homes, while gradually cutting the country’s dependence on coal. This fuel is also an important geopolitical strategy. Poland is determined to end its reliance on Russian energy within the next few years, part of a broader effort in Europe to diversify the region’s energy supply. Relations with Russia have been unsettled, sometimes perilously, over political differences as well as the role of Poland, a former Soviet satellite, in NATO. The country has found a ready replacement in the United States, which has an abundance of natural gas from the shale boom and a political incentive to ease Russia’s chokehold on Europe. Once it is chilled into a liquid, natural gas can be shipped around the world. American companies now have contracts that span decades and promise to supply Poland with the equivalent of about half of its current gas imports. Poland’s resolve is etched in this port in Swinoujscie. Ten years ago, a conflict between Russia and Ukraine left Poland and some of its neighbors in the cold when the Russian energy giant Gazprom shut down a critical pipeline for three weeks over a politically tinged pricing dispute. Much of the gas that Russia exports to Europe flows through Ukraine. This 2009 shutdown spurred Poland to build the terminal, which cost an estimated 1 billion euros, some financed by the European Union. The facility is named for Lech Kaczynski, the Polish president who died in a plane crash in Russia in 2010, a loss that hardened anti-Russian sentiment in Poland.
The port is already reshaping Poland’s relationship with Russia. Gas deliveries from Qatar began in 2015, which have been supplemented with one-off shipments from producers like Norway and the United States. PGNiG says the liquid natural gas shipments rose by almost 60 percent last year compared with 2017, squeezing imports from Russia and the East down by 6 percent. Russia currently supplies roughly half of Poland’s fuel. In the last six months, three American companies, Cheniere Energy, Venture Global LNG and Sempra Energy, have all signed long-term agreements with Poland. If all sources prove successful, Poland will have more than enough gas to replace its flow from Gazprom. Two of the American contracts also allow the Polish energy company to accept cargoes from the companies and then sell the gas to other markets. In an interview in his Warsaw office, Mr. Wozniak, a geologist and a former economy minister, portrayed Gazprom as both predatory and unreliable. Waving a cigarette, he traced Gazprom’s pipelines snaking from Russia into Europe’s industrial heartland on a map. Gazprom’s intention, he said, “is to capture this vital part of the European market and monopolize it in a way they please.” For Poland, the politics may ultimately trump the price. “In the L.N.G. trade price is only one component,” said Jeffrey W. Martin, chairman and chief executive of Sempra Energy in San Diego, which signed a contract to supply Poland from a planned Texas plant last year. “Security of supply is a big issue.”
