Poland has held talks with Qatar on the possibility of receiving LNG from the emirate as it looks to diversify its energy dependence away from Russia.
"LNG is an area of possible future co-operation, because Poland has decided to diversify the sources of supplementation," Polish Chamber of Commerce president Andrzej Arendarski said.
"We would like to have other suppliers too, so that there is no over-dependence on Russian producers," Arendarski, who was speaking on the sidelines of a meeting between Polish Chamber of Commerce and Qatar Chamber of Commerce and Industry officials in Doha, added.
Poland, which has domestic gas production of 5 Bcm, currently imports around 70% of its gas requirements from Russia, with annual demand expected to increase from 15.6 Bcm this year to 16.4 Bcm next year.
Poland's state-owned natural gas monopoly PGNiG has planned a Eur450 million ($708 million) LNG import terminal on the Baltic coast near the German border.
The terminal will have an initial size of 2.5 Bcm/year and PGNiG hopes to eventually have imports of 5 Bcm/year. The project is still in the design stage, with the company looking for a minority partner for the project and a supplier for the terminal. Operations are targeted to start in the fourth quarter of 2012.
On Monday, PGNiG's vice-president in charge of strategic projects, Radoslaw Didzinski, was reported as saying Gaz de France, Spain's Gas Natural and the UK's National Grid are among the potential partners, while the company has signed preliminary agreements with Iranian and Algerian companies and held talks with Qatari companies as well as Gaz de France about supplies.
According to Arendarski this is an area where Poland and Qatar can greatly improve their bilateral economic relations, which saw just $15 million in trade between the two countries last year.
On Tuesday, Qatari oil minister Abdullah al-Attiyah said his country became the world's largest exporter of LNG in 2007 and that by 2010 production capacity will increase from current levels of 30 million mt/year to 77 million mt/year.
Qatar holds the world's third-biggest gas reserves behind Russia and Iran.
Source: Platts
