Mateusz Morawiecki made the statement at the launch ceremony in the southeastern Polish village of Strachocina, Polish state news agency PAP reported.
Meeting reporters alongside his Slovakian counterpart Eduard Heger, the Polish PM said that the new interconnection “is one of the key energy projects in the region.”
Morawiecki added that the pipeline “will boost the energy security of Poland and Slovakia.”
Morawiecki also stated that the Polish-Slovakian gas interconnection “is also an investment for the Three Seas Initiative, the countries of central Europe, which are building their security through this project.”
He hailed the new north-south pipeline as “a pipeline of peace, a pipeline of security, in contrast to the Russian-German pipeline, Nord Stream 1 and 2… which was a pipeline of war.”
The Poland-Slovakia pipeline
The 167-kilometre interconnection links a gas node in Poland’s Strachocina with a compressor station in Slovakia’s eastern town of Veľké Kapušany, the PAP news agency reported.
The pipeline is designed to bring up to 5.7 billion cubic metres of gas from Slovakia to Poland each year, officials said.
Meanwhile, it will be able to carry up to 4.7 billion cubic metres a year in the opposite direction.
The new link is part of the so-called North-South Corridor, a network of infrastructure connecting liquid natural gas (LNG) terminals on Croatia’s Krk island and in Poland’s northwestern city of Świnoujście, according to officials.
Slovakia’s gas system has links to Austria, the Czech Republic and Hungary, as well as to Ukraine, reporters were told.
The launch of the Poland-Slovakia pipeline comes as European countries seek alternatives to Russian gas amid the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Friday is day 184 of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
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Source: PAP, energetyka24.com