Russia’s neighbor turns to Nigeria for oil and gas

Poland is seeking ways to deal with the energy crisis as it tries to cut its reliance on Moscow

Poland wants to boost crude oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports from Nigeria to keep domestic energy prices from soaring further, its President Andrzej Duda said at a press conference during a visit to the African country on Tuesday.

“In terms of energy security, today’s talks are important for us, as we talked about both LNG and oil supplies from Nigeria to Poland and the EU… I hope that our negotiations and the meeting between the business communities of Poland and Nigeria will bear fruit,” Duda said, as cited by TASS.

According to the president, Poland has bought Nigerian LNG and crude oil in recent years, but seeks to increase shipments in the near future.

“We would like to strengthen this cooperation, we would like to see more of these supplies to our country from Nigeria in the future,” he was cited as saying.

Poland is one of the EU’s more vocal opponents of Russian energy. While the country once received up to 10 billion cubic meters of gas per year from Russia via the Yamal-Europe pipeline, it vowed to end its dependence after the start of the conflict in Ukraine earlier this year, and terminated its Russian gas agreement.

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However, Poland is struggling with an energy crisis that appears to stem from these decisions. Last month, it was reported that the country’s state oil and gas company, PGNIG, was actively taking out loans to buy gas on the spot market after losing Russian supplies. As the spot prices are currently much higher than the long-term contracts Russia offered, the ultimate cost of energy for households has been climbing. According to ORLEN forecasts, by the end of 2022, gas prices in the country could be up to three times higher than last year.

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