Poland’s dominant gas firm PGNiG said it plans to receive five LNG cargoes in March at the regasification facility in Swinoujscie, which would mark a new record on a monthly basis for the country’s only regasification plant.
PGNiG is in charge of all the supplies coming to the Swinoujscie import terminal operated by Gaz-System.
The facility receives cargoes under PGNiG’s long-term deals with Qatargas and Cheniere, and the spot market.
“In March we will receive as many as five LNG cargoes at the President Lech Kaczynski terminal. This is a record – never before in one month have we received so many deliveries of liquefied natural gas”, Paweł Majewski, president of PGNiG’s management board, said in a statement on Friday.
According to PGNiG, the terminal already received the first delivery out of five on March 3, upon the arrival of the 2008-built Q-Flex LNG tanker, Al Huwaila, carrying 90,000 tonnes of LNG.
After regasification, this equals about 120 million cubic meters of natural gas, PGNiG said.
Also, the new LNG shipment marks the sixth LNG delivery to Swinoujscie this year and the 154th since the terminal started operating in 2016.
This delivery is a part of the long-term contract PGNiG has with LNG producer Qatargas, but the Polish firm would source most of the March deliveries via the spot market, it said.
Security of supply
Majewski said that “in the current situation, the possibility of importing LNG from reliable, trustworthy partners becomes particularly important from the point of view of fuel supply security.”
Also, the role of LNG in PGNiG’s imports would continue to grow, he said. Last year, LNG constituted about one-fourth of the company’s import volume.
Majewski said that the growth of LNG imports would be possible due to the expansion of the facility in Swinoujscie, where the firm has booked a regasification capacity of 6.2 billion cubic meters per annum since this year.
This is over one billion cubic meters more than before, he said.
Besides supplying the Polish market, PGNiG also uses the Swinoujscie facility to deliver regasified LNG to Ukraine.
At the beginning of February, the Polish firm said it would supply the second US LNG cargo to Ukraine in cooperation with ERU Europe via the regasification facility since 2019.
US LNG deliveries to increase
US LNG supplies keep coming to Poland and they will continue to rise in the future.
In January, the Polish firm said it had received the 40th LNG delivery from the US at the import terminal in Swinoujscie.
Last year, PGNiG finalized a deal to buy more LNG from US liquefaction plant developer Venture Global LNG, amending an original contract concluded back in 2018.
Under the deal, the firm will purchase another 2 million mt on a free on board basis for 20 years.
As a result, PGNiG’s contracted volume from Venture Global LNG will increase to 5.5 million mt or 7.4 bcm of gas per year.
Just recently, Venture Global said it had shipped the first commissioning cargo from its Calcasieu Pass plant in Louisiana.
Once completed, Venture Global’s first LNG export plant will produce about 10 mtpa of LNG from 18 modular units configured in 9 blocks.