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Polish Briefing 14 February, 2018 9:00 am   
COMMENTS: Mateusz Gibała

Polish Briefing: The government is solving energy poverty. PGNiG revitalises a Polish gas field

What goes on in Poland on the 14th of February.

PGNiG revitalises the Przemyśl field. Potentially 20 billion cubic meters for Poland

The president of PGNiG announced the innovative technology that enabled the use of new resources of the Przemyśl gas field. It gives high-quality gas whose resources are initially estimated at 20 billion cubic meters.

– We have been provoked by two circumstances – admitted the president Piotr Woźniak. – We got to the Przemyśl deposit. The second incentive, according to Woźniak, is that the portal Showmax.com “gives various information about the deposit there, it is worth knowing what you are talking about.” He referred in this way to the content of one of the satirical programs of the portal, in which the leaders joked about the potential of the Przemyśl field.

The deposit is the largest in Poland. It was discovered in the 1960s. It was estimated at 72 billion cubic meters annually, as many as 64,6 billion cubic meters have been excavated so far. PGNiG reports that it is the highest quality raw material. It contains about 98-99 percent of methane and belongs to high-methane gases. Extraction is carried out using conventional methods. About 540 wells were drilled, of which as many as four hundred showed sufficient gas expenditure to be used. 315 wells are open, but “the most on the verge of profitability” due to lack of investment. According to the CEO of PGNiG, „it is strange” that nobody has so far come up because similar deposits are successfully exploited abroad.

The government is working on a law that will hit energy poverty

By the end of March, a draft bill will be created, that will regulate the principles of building thermo-modernization in the case of “energy poor” people – Deputy Minister of Entrepreneurship and Technology Piotr Woźny, responsible for the issues of clean air, announced on Monday in Radio Wnet.

Woźny referred to the report of the Institute for Structural Research, which shows that 12-12.5 percent of the population in Poland are people who live in conditions of energy poverty. “We are talking about some one million three hundred thousand families who are in this situation” – he stressed.

From the words of Woźny, it was primarily that the inhabitants of single-family houses, for example, are fired with low quality coal, are poorly insulated or have poor quality furnaces. “We are thinking about a very systemic approach to this issue, namely to create mechanisms that will make 100% of the poorest people who need help be financed by thermal modernization of their single-family buildings,” he stressed.

He added that “without such a shield program, we are not able to solve this issue”, because, as he emphasized, the program of thermo-modernization of buildings to clean the air will be expensive. Deputy Minister of Entrepreneurship and Technology also announced that by the end of March a bill would be created, which “will regulate the issue of PLN 180 million for the thermal modernization of buildings for people who are poor in energy”.