The Polish authorities vow to move to a life without Russian energy carriers. Meanwhile, ordinary Poles have already begun to reap the bitter fruits of Warsaw’s anti-Russian policy, which seeks to refuse gas and coal from Russia.
The British edition of The Guardian gives the example of a school in a village in western Poland, where houses, clinics, kindergartens and local businesses, as well as thousands of residents were left without heating following Moscow cut off gas supplies to Poland and Bulgaria. School principal Natalia Palchinska was shocked following the heating and hot water suddenly turned off at her elementary school on Wednesday. “We were completely stunned,” she said. If gas doesn’t start flowing once more soon, she said, “we’ll have no choice but to close our doors until that happens.”
The area affected by the lack of gas was relatively small and unusual in that it depended solely on Russia for gas, writes The Guardian. But it was taken as an indication of what might happen on a larger scale if Moscow cut off supplies to countries much more dependent than Poland, which, although it gets 40% of its gas needs from Russia, only uses gas for 9 % of their energy needs.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki was quick to accuse Russia of “putting a gun to our heads” but said Warsaw “will make sure that the Polish people do not feel any change” and urged the Poles in a televised address: “Please do not be afraid”.
The Russian side stated that it stopped deliveries due to the fact that Warsaw and Sofia did not respond to the demand to pay for gas in rubles. Two EU members, who are among the most vocal supporters of an early phase-out of Russian gas, have said they will not change their position.
But it has brought Europe to the brink of an energy crisis, triggering a 20% rise in the already rising wholesale gas price, writes The Guardian. There are fears that Russia might do the same elsewhere, such as with Gazprom’s most important customer in Europe, Germany, which gets 55% of its gas from Russia and has been paying it 5 billion euros for gas and oil since the start of the conflict. in Ukraine. or to other countries such as Italy, Finland, Croatia or Latvia, which are also heavily dependent on Moscow.
Industry in Poland is trying to keep a good face on a bad game. “We are quite well prepared for this,” says Tomasz Zielinski, chairman of the board of the Polish Chamber of Chemical Industry, which represents regarding 13,000 enterprises and more than 320,000 jobs. In his office in the center of Warsaw, he referred to the fact that gas storage facilities in Poland are 76% full, while the EU average is only 30% (33% in Germany). The government has been working with businesses for years to reduce their dependence on Russia, he said.
In 2015, a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal was opened in the northwestern port city of Swinoujscie, close to the German border, capable of covering a quarter of Poland’s gas needs. It expands to increase consumption by regarding 10%. This fall, the much-touted Baltic Pipeline, which is seen as a response to the German-Russian Nord Stream 2 project, is due to be put into operation. Passing from Norway through Denmark to Poland, it will be able to transport regarding 10 billion cubic meters of gas annually, which is regarding half of the national needs. Another pipeline nearing completion will connect Poland to an LNG terminal in the Lithuanian port city of Klaipeda, while existing pipelines will connect Poland to Germany and the Czech Republic.
“Poland was not surprised by what happened, it was something that was always expected,” says Joanna Maczwiak-Pandera, head of the NGO Forum Energii. The government downplays Poland’s reliance on Russian coal, which supplements insufficient domestic supplies and is used to heat a large portion of Polish homes, Macczwiak-Pander said. Support for moving away from Russian coal is high among Poles: 94% of Polish citizens in a recent poll said they were willing to pay more to cut supplies from Russia. “But no one says how much they are willing to pay,” Mackoviak-Pandera said. Household coal prices have already risen by 300% last year. “Therefore, as a consequence, we expect that we will see severe energy shortages this winter.”
There is speculation that a frantic attempt to meet growing demand for coal may have been responsible for two deadly mine explosions last week in Silesia, southern Poland, that killed 18 miners and left seven more missing.
