Mott's Blog

I wrote in a blog post some months ago that Polish energy policy is hitting reality.  The plans for a nuclear plant have been naive and overlooked the simple fact that it will cost a lot of money and provide electricity as expensive as any other source. It is also likely to be illegal aid under EU competition rules [see pending European court challenge). The shale gas potential of Poland has been lost on the legal problem of no ownership of mineral rights, excessive government demands for payments, taxes, and red tape. Coal is...well, coal. It is dying everywhere else and the economics in Poland are especially unfavorable (deep mining, high sulfur content and high ash content). It cost more to mine generally than it can be sold for for the foreseeable future. The power plants that burn it are aging dinosaurs that are inefficient, enormously polluting, and threatened with near-term extinction by the carbon emission penalties. Now the shale gas wells are clearly an illusion at be...

From the CIRE.PL newsletter today (autotranslated): "As noted by the "Official Legal Newspaper", for the last 12 months the number of licenses for shale gas exploration has fallen by over 30 percent.from 105 to 68, primarily due to the withdrawal of foreign investors. "... citing figures from the Ministry of Environment,  15 groups of companies  now have licenses shale companies, while a year ago concessionaires were granted to  21 companies. Those who withdrew were mainly foreign investors who have experience in this field. Recently resigned, among others, are ENI, ExxonMobil, Total, Canadian Oil and Marathon. According to the daily, stagnation also is causing the falling pace of work. During the summer months in Poland were carried out just three new exploratory wells, and in the period January - August was a total of 13 wells. In early September drilling for shale gas concessions in general were not conducted. "As the "DGP", the more experie...