Gaz-System has obtained the necessary environmental decisions for all three onshore gas pipelines designed under the Floating Storage Regasification Unit (FSRU) program, which aims to strengthen the country’s energy security.
Poland plans to open an FSRU unit on the Baltic Sea near Gdansk in 2026 with a regasification capacity of 6 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas per year, in addition to its already existing LNG terminal, with a capacity of 6.2 bcm.
Apart from the construction of the FSRU unit, the investment also includes the expansion of the national gas transmission system, which is to be adapted to the distribution of additional volumes of gas across Poland. The project is the responsibility of Gaz-System, Poland’s gas transmission system operator.
“All the three onshore gas pipelines under the FSRU program have successfully passed the environmental procedures, thus we have reached the first important milestone,” said Tomasz Stępień, President of Gaz-System adding that now they are working on obtaining further administrative approvals and starting construction as soon as possible.
The Kolnik-Gdansk gas pipeline is the most advanced in terms of implementation, as the company is currently applying for a building permit. In the case of the Gardeja-Kolnik and Gustorzyn-Gardeja gas pipelines, the next step in obtaining permits will be the submission of applications for location decisions.
The FSRU program, next to the Baltic Pipe program and the expansion of the LNG terminal in Świnoujście, are all parts of the so-called North Gate, which aims to ensure Poland’s energy security by creating new entry points to the national transmission system and increasing the transport capacity of natural gas.
Gaz-System said that the investment is also important for the emergence of a competitive natural gas market in the Central and Eastern Europe region. The project is included in the fourth list of projects of common interest of the European Union (PCI).
