Description: The Canadian company, Central European Petroleum (CEP) has announced it uncovered one of the largest oil and gas deposits in Poland’s Baltic basin. The site, deemed Wolin East 1, reportedly contained up to 33 million tons of retrievable crude oil deposits and up to 27 million cubic meters of natural gas. The discovery amounted to as much as 20 times of Poland’s annual oil and gas production and is expected to drive investment opportunities and impact the country’s energy policy which was struggling to introduce potential alternative solutions. The discovery was hailed by Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski and MEP (Minister of European Parliament) Dariusz Jonski, who stated that the discovery represented an enormous opportunity for the Polish energy sector. Former CEO of the Polish national oil and gas company, PGNiG, stated that this represented primarily an opportunity for the private companies operating in Poland, which could choose to sell the oil and gas according to their interests, devaluating Poland’s national energy sector.
Impact: CEP’s discovery in the Baltic Sea pertaining to Polish territorial waters would most definitely attract private and state interests considering the vast amount of oil and gas reserves discovered in the basin. Poland would have to reformulate its national energy policy from pursuing self – sustainable and renewable sources of energy to exploration of effective ways and methods in reintegrating crude oil and natural gas. The country has a well-established infrastructure and delivery systems as it mostly relied on natural gas and oil in the past, while the profits of the discovery to the state would solely depend on Poland’s push to assert state – owned oil and gas companies within the site exploitation. The discovery also opens up Poland to potential sabotage and hybrid attacks from Russia, which wants to maintain Europe’s energy dependence on Russian crude oil and gas and has been enhancing sabotage and hybrid activities in the Baltic Sea, ever since the start of the war in Ukraine, subverting systems and capacities pertaining to European countries.