Poland opens tender to build Baltic Sea LNG Terminal
Poland Thursday announced a tender to select a company to build a liquified natural gas terminal in the Baltic Sea.
State-owned Polskie LNG and Gaz System, which will operate the terminal, plan to select a contractor by mid-2010. Bids are due by the end of 2009.
The terminal, slated for completion in 2014, will have an initial annual re-gasification capacity of 2.5 billion cubic meters of gas, with an option to double or even triple this volume at a later date.
In June, QatarGas signed a contract to supply the terminal with about 1 million metric tons, or about 1.5 billion cubic meters, of LNG a year as of 2014.
Poland currently imports some two-thirds of the 14 billion cubic meters of gas it consumes annually from Russia's OAO Gazprom (GAZP.RS) and has long sought to diversify gas supply routes.
The launch of the terminal will be a milestone in this strategy.
Poland's gas demand is projected to rise to some 18 billion cubic meters a year by 2015. But given local output of more than 4 billion cubic meters a year, supplies from the LNG terminal and imports via designed interconnecting pipelines from Germany, the share of Russian gas in the overall balance will decrease.
State-owned Polskie LNG and Gaz System, which will operate the terminal, plan to select a contractor by mid-2010. Bids are due by the end of 2009.
The terminal, slated for completion in 2014, will have an initial annual re-gasification capacity of 2.5 billion cubic meters of gas, with an option to double or even triple this volume at a later date.
In June, QatarGas signed a contract to supply the terminal with about 1 million metric tons, or about 1.5 billion cubic meters, of LNG a year as of 2014.
Poland currently imports some two-thirds of the 14 billion cubic meters of gas it consumes annually from Russia's OAO Gazprom (GAZP.RS) and has long sought to diversify gas supply routes.
The launch of the terminal will be a milestone in this strategy.
Poland's gas demand is projected to rise to some 18 billion cubic meters a year by 2015. But given local output of more than 4 billion cubic meters a year, supplies from the LNG terminal and imports via designed interconnecting pipelines from Germany, the share of Russian gas in the overall balance will decrease.