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Central European Petroleum (CEP) announced on Monday the discovery of greater oil deposit in the history of Polandand one of the most important in Europe for 10 years.
Discovered under the Baltic Sea, about six kilometers off the city of świnoujście, in the far northwest of the country, this deposit would contain 22 million tonnes of oil and 5 billion cubic meters of gas.
These quantities correspond approximately to the annual demand for oil of Poland.
Is the CEP company required to sell its production to Poland?
Under European law, CEP, which discovered the deposit, is free to sell its production to the buyer of his choice, but she assured Monday that Poland would have the priority to benefit from oil and gas extracted from its new Wolin East 1 well (WE1).
“Priority is given to the one who discovers ore. If it is this company that discovers it, it has priority on all the others”explains Piotr Woźniak, ex-CEO of PGNIG, a Polish company involved in the extraction, storage and distribution of natural gas and oil.
“They are interested in money, not in a nation. They can sell it to anyone. Of course, with all international considerations, they cannot sell it to the Russians or the Medellin cartel in Colombia either, because everyone would be furious”he adds.
As Piotr Woźniak explains, the priority of Central European Petroleum is now to raise funds in order to be able to exploit the deposit.
“The reality of business is that the company will now want to obtain money as quickly as possible. It must document this deposit in order to hold all the rights and to be legally able to exploit it. It must drill, and to drill, it must spend money. To spend money, it must have it”explains the former CEO of PGNIG.
“She somehow shows off a potential buyer, because she knows that we [en Pologne] Let us want to diversify our sources of supply, which we bet on our own resources, at least according to the reasoning of the government administration “.
Is the deposit sufficient to ensure the energy independence of Poland?
According to Piotr Woźniak, the 22 million tonnes of oil from the deposit discovered by CEP will not upset the European energy balance.
“The treatment capacity of Polish refineries is around 24 million tonnes of crude oil per year, which corresponds to the quantity that we are able to treat within Polish borders”he says.
“From the point of view of a major energy policy, it is not a breakthrough”abonde woycie jakóbics, expert an embarrassment. “But from the point of view of investment in the Baltic Sea, yes, because it is several times higher than what we are currently extracting in the Baltic Sea”.
The hydrocarbon specialist also believes that it is “of a positive investment signal indicating that these deposits could be more numerous, that it is profitable to look for raw materials in [la mer Baltique]“.
The discovery of this new deposit comes while Poland endeavors to develop the production of renewable energies on its territory. For the first time, the latter has exceeded the consumption of coal At least in June, reaching 44.1 % of the entire Polish electricity production.