“Poland needs strong development impulses. The basic one is investments, but undoubtedly, export is also the driving force behind development – not only in terms of shipping our goods and services into the world. Foreign expansion of Polish companies is necessary which, apart from trade, also means investments” states Paweł Majewski, the president of the board of the Polish Oil Mining and Gas Extraction.
The foreign expansion of companies as one of the pillars of growth is indicated in the government’s Strategy for Responsible Development. Building national champions, strengthening their export competences fits in with this idea. A large Polish multi-energy company, and at the same high-technology company, with an international reach, could provide our economy with a chain of connections and cooperations worth billions of zloty, as well as thousands of jobs.
Over the years, companies from the PGNiG Group have specialized in services that are in demand not only in the oil industry. This is our export commodity thanks to which, as Polish contractors, we are present on almost every continent of the globe. In the global league, our specialists from Toruń Geophysics “play” as equals. They carry out seismic surveys not only for oil giants. They also collect seismic data for investments in geothermal energy, underground warehouses and offshore wind farms. It is a foreign expansion of the Polish specialist knowledge and Polish experience. In turn, experts from Exalo, another company from our capital group, have specialized in drilling and servicing equipment used for this purpose, and more recently in cementing services for the upstream industry. Outside Poland, they carried out tasks in Pakistan, not only for us, but also for Pakistani companies as well as for principals in Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Africa. They were also involved in searching for sources of geothermal energy, e.g. in Germany, Sweden, Lithuania and Slovakia.
Natural gas from Poland has also been supplied to Ukraine for over four years. This year alone, it was nearly 1 billion cubic meters. It is not an easy market, but with its liberalization and high demand for gas it is a promising area of expansion. Here, one of the key factors of success can be considered close cooperation with a local company, rooted in Ukrainian reality, and at the same time with well-worn paths. For PGNiG, it is the Ukrainian-American ERU Group, with which we jointly participate in the auction proceedings. Thanks to this cooperation, gas from Poland reaches e.g. to the Ukrainian transmission system operator, but beyond trade, the relationships that have been established also open up opportunities for gas exploration and extraction in Ukraine.
Helium is also a Polish export commodity on a global scale, which due to wide application, for example in medicine, is a very valuable product. We produce it about 3 million cubic meters per year, which covers 9 percent demand for the European market. Examples of the effects of the activities of companies from the PGNiG Group show that specialization can be an effective way to conquer new markets in the world, also outside the oil industry. The knowledge, competences and experience of the highly qualified staff are valuable a resource that can provide an advantage against international competition.