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The planned Baltic Pipe gas pipeline, connecting the Polish and Danish gas transmission system, is to have a capacity of 10 billion cubic meters per year. It is supposed to be ready by October 2022.
Reservation for 15 years
– PGNiG has booked the capacity with an estimated value of PLN 8.1 billion within 15 years – Naimski explained.
As he recalled, at the end of November the so-called economic tests were carried out with a positive result by Baltic Pipe investors, that is, transmission system operators from Poland and Denmark. This result is one of the conditions for concluding gas transmission contracts. As Naimski said, 15-year contracts will be concluded at the turn of January and December. These will be contracts between PGNiG and the Danish transmission system operator Energinet.dk and the Polish Gaz System.
– This means that successive points in this rather complicated schedule for the implementation of the Baltic Pipe construction investment remain positively implemented. The schedule is very tight, but it is being implemented – he emphasized. According to government plans, by December 2018, a final investment decision will be taken and investors are going to sign construction contracts.
The so-called Open Season 2017 procedures were carried out previously, which were supposed to confirm the market interest in the planned main line. Both the first and the second phase of this procedure confirmed the business justification for the construction of transmission infrastructure, allowing the transmission of gas from Norway through the territory of Denmark to Poland and from Poland to Denmark. At the end of October, Polish PGNiG announced that it had submitted a ‘binding offer for a capacity reservation’ in the Baltic Pipe from 1 October 2022 to 30 September 2037. The liability amounts to PLN 8.1 billion.
Poland is going to solve problems with Denmark without harming Baltic Pipe
Piotr Naimski assured that there are no disputable issues regarding the border between Polish and Danish territorial waters, which could harm the Baltic Pipe. In his opinion, the suggestions that such a dispute exists are false. As he said, during his last week’s visit to Copenhagen it was agreed that these issues will be resolved under the UN Convention.
– Because we are entering a more and more visible – also for the outside world – implementation stage of this investment, there will be more and more analyses, statements, voices from important places, that it is a very difficult project, that it will be difficult to implement it in accordance with the schedule, that the gas imported this way will be 30 or 50 or 100 percent more expensive, that problems aimed at undermining the credibility of Polish actions in this matter will be multiplied. One should, however, take it into account – Naimski said.
Baltic Pipe – assumptions
Baltic Pipe is a strategic infrastructural project that will result in the formation of a new gas supply corridor on the European market. It will enable the transport of gas from deposits in Norway to the Danish and Polish markets, as well as to recipients in the neighboring countries.
The Baltic Pipe project is on the first list of projects of common interest (PCI) developed by the European Commission in 2013, and on the next list adopted by the European Commission in November 2015. This project, along with the expansion of the LNG terminal, is also on the third PCI list, which was published by the European Commission.
The Baltic Pipe consists of five main elements: a coalbed gas pipeline leading from the Norwegian system in the North Sea to a collection point in the Danish system, extension of existing capacities in the Danish overland transmission system, construction of a gas compressor station on the Danish island of Zealand, an offshore interconnection pipeline running from Denmark to Poland together with the receiving terminal and development of the Polish transmission system
