Poland imposes sanctions against Novatek, on Gazprom's rights in Yamal-Europe JV

MOSCOW. April 26 (Interfax) - Poland's Ministry of the Interior has imposed sanctions against Russian gas companies Gazprom and Novatek , as well as the latter's Cracow-based subsidiary Novatek Green Energy Sp. z o.o., the ministry said.

The sanctions against Novatek call for the freezing of assets and the exclusion of its Cracow subsidiary from government procurements.

The sanctions against Gazprom, which owns a 48% stake in STG EuRoPol GAZ SA, a Polish company that is a co-owner of the Yamal-Europe gas pipeline, call for freezing rights to shares and other securities, as well as dividends.

Poland's sanctions on Gazprom's stake in the Russian-Polish joint venture virtually duplicate the approach of Polish gas monopoly PGNiG, which directly and indirectly through its subsidiary Gas-Trading SA owns 51.18% of the JV and has blocked Russian representatives from managing bodies and dividend payments by the joint enterprise. Gazprom even filed a lawsuit in international jurisdiction at the beginning of the year, but later withdrew it. EuRoPol GAZ's accumulated earnings that can be sent to shareholders as dividends for recent years amount to 1.74 billion zloty, or $430 million, according to PGNiG.

Novatek Green Energy, known as Novatek Polska prior to 2020, was founded in 2009. Novatek's operations in the sphere of liquefied petroleum gas in the country were expanded by purchasing assets from Norway's Equinor in 2010. The company introduced services in the sphere of building LNG regasification plants in 2017.

It sells regasified LNG on the European market, which is produced during transshipment of LNG (boil-off gas) and regasification of purchased LNG at the company's stations in Poland and Germany.

Novatek Green Energy sold Novatek's entire export volume of LPG in 2021, a total of 567,000 tonnes. It put ten LNG fuel stations into service in 2021, with eight in Germany and two in Poland, as well as launching 27 regasification plants in Poland. At the end of 2021, 16 LNG filling stations (12 in Germany, four in Poland) and 48 regasification plants (one in Germany, 47 in Poland) were operating on the European market. The first shipment of bio-LNG was made to an LNG fuel station in Rostock in Germany in November 2021.