The project to build the pipeline is part of Warsaw’s efforts to diversify gas supplies and reduce the country’s energy dependence on Russia.
Gaz-System announced on Sunday that one of its pipe-laying vessels had started building the new gas link in Danish waters, close to the island of Bornholm, Polish state news agency PAP reported.
It added that construction is set to be completed this year, weather permitting.
“After five years of planning, designing, and selecting contractors, laying the first offshore gas pipeline in the history of the Polish gas industry has just started. By the end of this year, we are planning to weld and lay on the Baltic seabed 275 kilometres of pipeline which will connect the coasts of Poland and Denmark,” Gaz-System CEO Tomasz Stępień was cited as saying in English.
Piotr Naimski, the Polish government's pointman on strategic energy infrastructure, was cited in a statement as saying that the Baltic Pipe “will then be one of the main components to guarantee Poland’s energy security.”
Once built, the Baltic Pipe will have the capacity to carry 10 billion cubic metres of natural gas from Norway to Poland via Denmark annually.
The Polish president in 2019 described the pipeline as “a strategic project for Poland’s energy transformation, as well as for the energy security of the entire Central and Eastern Europe region.”
Poland’s annual gas usage is estimated at around 17 billion cubic metres, of which half is imported from Russia’s gas giant Gazprom under a contract expiring in 2022.
(jh/pk)
Source: PAP