Poland & the Coal Collapse: We’ll Have to Import from Russia

According to the publication Rzeczpospolita, the Polish company Weglokoks plans to import Russian coal and has already received permission from the government of the country to do so.

This decision is dictated by "a huge backlog in production," notes Rzeczpospolita: this year Poland, which itself is a large coal country, may not have the 5 million tons of coal required to meet demand. Miners should produce 150,000 tons of coal per day, but at present the production capacity is 80-110 thousand tons.

Just three years ago, the question of importing Russian coal caused a stormy reaction in Poland from local miners who organized protests, blocking railroads to prevent coal from the Russian Federation from entering the country. In October 2014, Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski signed amendments to the fuel quality law adopted by the Sejm aimed at limiting imports of cheap Russian coal. However, these attempts to prevent Russian imports were unfolding amid a sharp drop in their own production: where, according to Polish energy expert Andrzej Schensnjak, in the 1990s Poland produced 130 million tons of coal per year, now its production volume dropped to 70 million tons.

Dimitri Dolaberidze