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Poland, Ukraine to link power grids by end of year: gov’t official

13.06.2022 17:00
Poland and Ukraine are set to connect their power systems by the end of this year, a senior Polish energy official has said.
Piotr Naimski.
Piotr Naimski. PAP/Paweł Supernak

Piotr Naimski revealed the plan at an energy conference in the northern city of Gdańsk on Monday, public broadcaster Polish Radio’s IAR news agency reported.

“The power line will connect Poland’s southeastern city of Rzeszów with Ukraine’s western city of Khmelnytskyi and have a voltage of 400 kV,” Naimski said. 

Naimski is the Polish government’s commissioner for strategic energy infrastructure. 

Meanwhile, Olexander Motsyk, an aide to Ukraine’s energy minister, said that the new link would enable "export and import of power." He added that his country could support Poland "in the field of nuclear energy."

LNG terminal in Gdańsk

Naimski told reporters at the two-day conference that Poland would seek to speed up the completion of a floating storage regasification unit (FRSG) for liquid natural gas (LNG) in the Bay of Gdańsk. 

He added that Poland could build "not one, but two FRSG terminals, depending on our needs."

The facility was originally scheduled to be ready in 2027, Poland’s PAP news agency reported.

The decision to bring its completion forward is partly in response to demand for LNG from the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Naimski said.

He reaffirmed an earlier announcement that Poland’s new gas pipeline from Norway, known as the Baltic Pipe, would be launched in October and reach its full capacity of 10 billion cubic metres per year in December. 

These moves come as Poland seeks to become independent from Russian gas amid the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine and Moscow’s demand that countries pay for its deliveries in rubles.

(pm/gs)

Source: IAR, PAP, bankier.pl