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What goes on in Poland on the 22nd of June.
Orlen does not want windfall tax, but is not afraid of the flood of cheaper fuels from Hungary
BiznesAlert.pl asked the president of PKN Orlen whether windfall tax should be introduced in Poland in order to finance the mechanism of reducing fuel prices. The Polish recipe is different, in his opinion, and the risk of supplies of cheaper fuels from Hungary to MOL stations taken over after the merger with Lotos has been ruled out.
– The Polish and Hungarian markets are different. On the Hungarian market, MOL covers 92 percent of fuel demand. Polish refineries meet 71 percent of consumption. About 5 million tons of fuel are imported annually. About 3.7 million tons are imported by companies other than Orlen and Lotos. If we introduced regulations similar to the Hungarian ones today, it would not be possible to keep the market at the current level. Imports would take a big hit – argued Daniel Obajtek, president of PKN Orlen, in response to the BiznesAlert.pl question.
– Another issue is that in Hungary the prices of fuels not covered by the aforementioned mechanism are higher than in Poland – explained the president of Orlen, pointing to diesel prices reaching PLN 9 per liter, while in Poland it is about PLN 8 per liter. – The Hungarian market currently has a huge problem with covering the demand for fuels – he added. He referred to the limited capacity of the Duna Refinery in Hungary.
Social agreement on coal phase-out to be ready in a month
Deputy Minister of State Assets Piotr Pyzik announced that the process of preparing a social agreement with the energy sector to withdraw from coal was completed by the end of June 2022.
– The social agreement concerning the energy sector, i.e. lignite, is in the final stage of preparations. We intend to close it by the end of June this year. We want the processes of creating the National Energy Security Agency (NABE) to be realistically carried out from the beginning of September, so that it can function from January 1, said Deputy Minister of State Assets Piotr Pyzik in response to BiznesAlert.pl’s questions. – The lignite social contract is a challenge. The energy transformation in Poland is a civilizational change. We are taking one big step forward. The solution to the social issues in the contract is extremely important. We are dealing with extremes such as entitlement and social justice. We have to stick it together, because NABE will be a commercial company, and it will have a different dimension also in terms of social assessment. The reason is that the main beneficiary of this agreement will be people and we want citizens to undergo these transformation unscathed, argued the minister in Gdynia.
