Vladimir Socor has an interesting piece over at Eurasia Daily Monitor on Gazprom’s negotiations for an increased supply agreement to Poland’s PGNIG, and the limitations of recent EU legislation designed to limit monopolies in the energy trade.

Gazprom does not treat the proposed 3 bcm annual increase in deliveries to Poland as a normal commercial transaction. Instead, it wants to entangle the new agreement into a web of linkages that would perpetuate Polish dependence on Gazprom. To that end, it insists on the following points (Gazeta Wyborcza, August 31; Kommersant, September 2, 7, 13, 27):

1) Packaging the new agreement with the 1993 inter-governmental agreement on transit of Russian gas via Poland and deliveries to Poland, which runs to 2022; and setting the duration of deliveries by contract until 2037. All this would help Gazprom to continue monopolizing the Polish market for that duration, preventing diversification of Poland’s natural gas imports and discouraging investment in the LNG project.

2) Exclusive right for Gazprom to use the Yamal-Europe pipeline in Poland until 2045. This would consolidate Gazprom’s position in Poland and Germany for another generation.