What goes on in Poland on the 13th of April.
Poland may need almost twice as much gas, also from the Yamal Pipeline
Gaz-System submitted to the President of the Energy Regulatory Office the draft National Ten-Year Development Plan (NTYDP) for the transmission system for the years 2022-2031. The market consultations regarding this document will start on April 12 this year.
To implement the guidelines of the Polish Energy Policy until 2040 and acting in accordance with the provisions of Article 16 of the Energy Law, GAZ SYSTEM prepared the draft National Ten-Year Development Plan for the years 2022-2031. The document identifies future needs of the Polish economy in relation to gaseous fuel and defines the action plan to be implemented by the transmission system operator to meet those needs.
In its Development Plan, Gaz-System assumes the implementation of 30 key investment projects thanks to which the length of the national gas transmission network will increase to 13.1 thousand km from the current 11 thousand km, and the capacity of gas compressor stations installed in Poland will more than double.
The Plan presents new projections of gas consumption in Poland. They show that over a 10-year horizon, market demand for natural gas may increase by as much as 50% on an annual basis, while peak gas demand may periodically increase by even more than 100% compared to the demand records observed so far in 2019-2021. Such large increases are due to the transformation process that is increasingly evident in the energy and district heating sector.
The new Development Plan has two time horizons and two priorities associated with them. In short-term horizon, it is crucial for the Company to complete all strategic diversification projects involving the construction of new or the expansion of the existing gas entry points to Poland. In long-term horizon, the operator will focus on implementing a number of investment projects that are complementary to the currently implemented strategic projects. The priority in this period is to strengthen the national gas transmission system so as to enable efficient distribution of the gas acquired from new sources in Poland and provide services to new customers who are undergoing the energy transformation process – said Tomasz Stępień, President of the Management Board of GAZ-SYSTEM.
In the prepared plan, Gaz-System assumes further achievement of the overriding goal, that is diversification of the directions of gas supply to Poland through continuation of a number of strategic investment projects, such as: Baltic Pipe, the Poland-Lithuania and Poland-Slovakia interconnectors and the expansion of the LNG Terminal in Świnoujście.
In view of the growing market demand for natural gas, GAZ-SYSTEM also plans to undertake new investment projects. The most important of them are gas pipelines connecting the national gas transmission system with the FSRU terminal to be constructed in the Gdańsk Bay, gas pipelines which will ensure the coverage of increased demand for gas in the Warsaw area, and a gas pipeline connecting the Damasławek CUGS with the Mogilno CUGS. The draft NTYDP also envisages the use of the Polish section of the Yamal gas pipeline for the needs of the national gas transmission network from 2026. Active use of this gas pipeline capacity in the period when a diversified and competitive gas market will already be established in Poland will enable efficient distribution of gas, among others, from the so-called Northern Gateway (Baltic Pipe and LNG Terminal), through the national gas transmission system.