By Marynia Kruk
WARSAW--Polish state-controlled natural gas monopoly PGNiG SA
(PGN.WA) should redistribute some of its large amount of domestic
exploration acreage to other companies that are also exploring for
shale gas in Poland, Treasury Minister Mikolaj Budzanowski said
Wednesday.
"It's a question of how to mobilize state-owned companies and
other firms to achieve the goal [of increasing domestic gas
production]," Mr. Budzanowski said. "We have to better manage what
we have."
PGNiG has 226 exploration licenses in Poland and "not all of
them are adequately managed so there should be a division of these
licenses between other companies that are also exploring for shale
gas in Poland," he said.
In late August, small independent exploration company San Leon
Energy PLC (SLE.LN), said it found conventional oil in an area of
western Poland abandoned decades earlier by PGNiG.
The theory that Poland's geology is similar to shale gas
formations in the U.S. have drawn entreneurial companies with North
American know-how to central Europe's largest country, hoping to
replicate the U.S. shale gas boom.
These upstarts are beginning to reveal the shortcomings of
slow-moving PGNiG, which has yet to fully shake off the habits of
its past as a monopoly founded in a centrally planned economy.
-Write to Marynia Kruk at marynia.kruk@dowjones.com