The EU attempt to replace Nord Stream with Baltic Pipe project failed miserably

Marcel Salikhov, President of the Institute for Energy and Finance, commented to the Ekonomika Segodnya publication on the commissioning of the Baltic Pipe gas pipeline.

The Polish energy company GAZ-system published information about the actual launch of the Baltic Pipe gas pipeline. This is an infrastructure project aimed at creating a new corridor for gas supplies to the European market. The company said that Poland will also be able to supply gas to Denmark.

Gas from the Norwegian shelf covers only the needs of Poland and cannot become a support for Europe, Marcel Salikhov says.

“In general, Baltic Pipe will not replace Russian supplies, because its capacity is 10 billion cubic meters. The gas pipeline from Norway was, in principle, designed as a replacement for gas from Russia only for Poland, because the country has imported exactly 10 billion cubic meters in recent years. Accordingly, the idea is to pump exactly this volume from Norway. For the whole of Europe, this is unlikely to be of help, the gas pipeline can help in small volumes, but it is unlikely to be able to replace Russian supplies,” the expert said.

Another nuance that the interlocutor of the publication draws attention to is that Norway still supplies Poland with the maximum that is possible for it, and in the near future it will not be able to significantly increase this volume.

“Norway plans to expand its capacities, introduce new deposits, it has them and they can be put into operation gradually over several years. In recent years, the country has actually adhered to a strategy of not increasing production. They planned that during the shortage they would use the capacities that they had in reserve. It will take several years to put them into operation, at first it will be small volumes of pumping, these fields will work at full capacity only in ten years,” the speaker concluded.