The European Union issued a range of directives on the power sector management. The most important directives concerning earth gas include the Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on common rules for the internal market of natural gas. The Directive has been supplemented by the Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on the conditions for access to the natural gas transmission networks.
These regulations provide among others for the obligation to establish an independent operator of the transmission system and third parties’ access to the transmission network. They also aim at developing cross-border connections.
Poland could see how important these issues are when it had to sign agreements for natural gas deliveries to Poland in 2006 and 2009-2010. The results of the audit completed in 2012 revealed that the monopolist in gas deliveries may use at least two factors to dictate gas prices: the lack of an alternative infrastructure for diversification of gas delivery directions and the control over gas transmission networks.
Since Poland had no alternative gas suppliers, it had to accept the conditions of the dominant supplier and related companies. That situation also helped Gazprom avoid problematic issues during the negotiations. One of them concerned appointment of an independent operator of the gas transmission system on the Polish section of the Yamal pipeline: the solution used at that time was illegal.
The issue was discussed and solved in line with the Polish law only after the European Commission representatives got involved in the final stage of negotiations. Finally, a decision was taken that one-person State Treasury company – Gas Transmission Operator Gaz-System SA will be the operator on the Polish section of the transit pipeline Yamal – Europe.
Gaz-System company, having been appointed as the operator in 2011, enabled third parties’ access to free transmission capacity of the Yamal pipeline which resulted in launching the so-called virtual reverse, that is gas supplies via that pipeline from West-European suppliers. Thanks to new investments at that time, the gas transmission capacity from Germany and Czech Republic increased by 1 billion m³ gas per year. All in all, the technical capacity of natural gas imported to Poland from new directions went up in 2011 by about 3.3 billion m³ gas per year (which makes up 30 percent of the gas import to Poland).
“The findings of nearly all NIK audits confirm that Poland should consistently, also with the help of its EU partners, diversify gas sources and directions, guaranteeing power safety to Polish citizens” – underlined Kwiatkowski.
NIK President also discussed other strategic areas of power safety: electroenergetics, nuclear power and energy from renewable sources. Kwiatkowski also presented NIK’s plans for next year. At the beginning of January, the Supreme Audit Office is going to present a report on shale gas in Poland. In subsequent months, it will deal with investments related to the LNG terminal construction, capacity of conventional electroenergetics and safety of gas transmission networks.
