Tobiszowski said Poland would have to adjust coal production to meet local demand. "Output will grow," he told reporters. Tobiszowski said that after Polish firms take over the local assets of France's EDF, including a 1.8-gigawatt power plant in Rybnik, southern Poland, the plant could burn more Polish coal than Russian coal.
Poland's coal output stood at 70.4 million tonnes in 2016, 1.8 million tonnes lower than in 2015 as some of the most loss-making mines were run down as part of a restructuring plan for the industry. Coal imports from Russia amounted to around 8 million tonnes last year. Poland also relies on Russian gas and oil. On Friday, the energy ministry announced details of the planned take-over of troubled miner KHW by the country's biggest coal producer, PGG, which was bailed out itself in 2016 by state-run utilities. Tomasz Rogala, chief executive of PGG, said the firm wants to produce about 34 million tonnes of coal per year and that combined investments may reach about 7.2 billion zlotys ($1.8 billion) from 2017 until 2020.
"We are convinced we will show a positive financial result at the end of 2017," Rogala told a news conference. PGG owns five mines with annual output of about 30 million tonnes and KHW produces some 10 million tonnes of coal a year from four mines. PGG and KHW employ 32,000 and 13,000 people respectively.
KHW needs about 1 billion zlotys to keep going and Poland has said that unless the two mining firms merge before the end of the first quarter, KHW might collapse. State-run utilities agreed to inject the missing cash, while it is unclear whether KHW bondholders agreed to convert the company's debt to equity as expected by the energy ministry.
Separately, Mariusz Orion Jedrysek, deputy environment minister, commented on Friday about US President Donald Trump's order to undo Obama-era climate change regulations and support the coal industry. "What Donald Trump recently declared on coal means that the time for coal is not that bad," Jedrysek said.
Copyright Reuters, 2017