Poland’s dominant gas firm and LNG importer, PGNiG, said it has received the 36th LNG cargo at the Swinoujscie terminal in 2022, one shipment more than during the entire last year.
The 174,000-cbm LNG carrier Asklipios, owned by Capital Product Partners and chartered by Cheniere, delivered the cargo from the US on August 22, according to a statement by PGNiG.
It unloaded about 60,000 tons of LNG or some 80 million cubic meters of natural gas after regasification, the Polish firm said.
Besides marking the 36th LNG cargo in 2022, this is also the 184th shipment to land at the Swinoujscie facility since 2016.
PGNiG recently said that LNG imports via the country’s regasification facility in Swinoujscie rose about 33 percent to 2.72 billion cubic meters in the first half of this year.
Besides the Swinoujscie facility, PGNiG also received three LNG cargoes in the first half via the Klaipedos Nafta-operated FSRU-based facility in Lithuania’s port of Klaipeda. The firm received in total four cargoes via the Lithuanian facility up to date.
The first half of 2022 witnessed a “radical shift” in the structure of PGNiG’s foreign gas supply sources, it said.
PGNiG said the share of gas imports from across Poland’s eastern border shrank to 37 percent, from 58 percent a year earlier, while the share of LNG imports rose to 34 percent, compared with 25 percent in the same period of 2021.
In April, Russia’s Gazprom cut supplies to Poland via the Yamal pipeline, prompting PGNiG to boost LNG imports.
The growth of LNG imports was possible due to the expansion of Gaz System’s facility in Swinoujscie, where the firm has booked a regasification capacity of 6.2 bcm per annum since this year. This is some 1.2 bcm more than before.
Thanks to further investments, the capacity will increase to 8.3 bcm of gas per year in 2024. PGNiG booked all of these volumes as well.