Poland's refusal to renew a long-term gas supply contract with Russia after 2022 does not mean that Europe started to curtail the procurement of natural gas from Russia, Russian energy scientists Vyacheslav Kulagin and Alexey Belogoryev said, speaking to Vestnik Kavkaza.
Thus, the director of the Center for Studies of World Energy Markets at the RAS Institute of Energy Research, Vyacheslav Kulagin, noted that the rejection of the non-contract system doesn't mean rejection of Russian gas as a whole. "After 2022 Poland may buy Russian gas on spot markets, moreover, a new contract on different conditions is possible. Poland understands that it needs gas, so it has to find it somewhere. If it is Norwegian gas, then someone else will not receive those 10 billion cubic meters of gas per year that Warsaw, needs for example, Germany. And it will be Germany which will have to replace Norwegian supplies by Russian gas. As a result, there will be some redistribution of the market, but it will not affect export volumes from Russia to Europe," the expert believes.
The energy expert reminded Lithuania's sad experience, which decided not to buy Russian gas for political reasons. "Lithuania started to buy LNG in the United States and it turned out that these purchases are significantly more expensive than Russian gas," he warned, noting that today the Russian gas price is more favorable than the spot trade, which is why the interest of European consumers to supplies from Russia is growing.
The fact that Warsaw said about such plans six years before the contract expires points to the political nature of the statement. "For officials is's convenient to make such statements, as announced decisions will be executed by different people and they can easily give them up, because the rejection of Russian supplies wasn't fixed legally. The real decision will be made approximately in 2021. The Polish authorities simply show their attitude to cooperation with Russia," Vyacheslav Kulagin believes.
"Following the last year Russia's share on the European gas market is about 31%, and this figure has remained relatively stable over the last 10 years," he concluded.
The deputy director of energy policy of the Institute of Energy and Finances, Alexey Belogoriev, in turn, pointed out that Poland's statement was not unexpected for Gazprom. "After commissioning of the the Liquefied Natural Gas terminal in Swinoujscie, it became clear that Poland will try to get away from Russian gas as much as possible . Another thing is that it is not possible to completely abandon it due to infrastructure constraints and cost-effectiveness of alternative routes of gas supplies," the expert expects.
Belogoriev warned that it may be followed by a number of similar statements from other European countries. "Many Gazprom's contracts will expire around 2022. The rapid growth of spot trading observed in Europe in recent years shows that many of Gazprom's traditional partners strive to buy more on the spot. It doesn't threat the Russian gas industry directly," he concluded, adding that in the case of reforming the structure of Russian exports, if 'Gazprom export' loses the monopoly on the sale of Russian gas abroad, the relations with Europe will improve and supplies will increase.
