The Polish gas transmission operator, Gaz-System S.A., and Eustream A.S., its Slovak counterpart, announced the signature of a letter of intent to cooperate on the development of a gas pipeline between Poland and Slovakia.
Slovakia was among the countries hit worst by the January 2008 gas crisis between Russia and Ukraine, which left some countries cold in the midst of winter.
"The Poland-Slovakia interconnection which is currently being analysed could become an element of the North-South Corridor," said Jan Chadam, president of the Gaz-System S.A. Management Board.
According to him, one of the benefits of the project is that it would give Central European customers access to the Świnoujście liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal, situated on the Baltic Sea and the Szeczyn lagoon in the extreme north-west of Poland, by means of Poland's transmission infrastructure.
"The company will build more than 1,000 km of new pipelines by 2014, thus enabling the transmission of greater gas volumes in Poland," Chadam explained.
Antoine Jourdain, chairman of the Board of Directors at Eustream A.S., said the Slovak regulator was happy to make this new step with its Polish colleagues. He added that the Polish-Slovak interconnector would later link up with the Slovak-Hungarian interconnector, supplying the market and improving supply security in the Visegrad group of countries, which includes Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary.
The two companies agreed to establish a joint team responsible for preparing the technical, economic, environmental and legal analyses of the Poland-Slovakia interconnection project.
The final result of this cooperation will be a feasibility study specifying the business conditions for the development of the Poland-Slovakia interconnection. The decision on whether to proceed with the project will be made in 2012.
The companies are also planning to jointly apply for funding from the European Union to co-finance the planned analytical work.
According to Polish daily Rzeczpospolita, Poland has only one interconnector with Germany in the region of Lasowa, which provides for imports of just 900 million cubic metres of gas a year. At a later stage, its capacity will be raised to 1.5 billion cubic meteres.
This autumn Poland will open an interconnector with the Czech Republic. Its capacity will be around five hundred million cubic metres of gas per year.
The connection with Slovakia would be much more efficient – it would transport up to five billion cubic metres of gas, Rzeczpospolita writes. Building 160km of pipeline will cost over half a billion zlotys (129 million euros).
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