Page 24 - BNE_magazine_06_2020 Growers

24 I Companies & Markets
bne June 2020
bne:Deal
Poland signs contract with Italy’s Saipem to lay Baltic Pipe
Wojciech Kosc in Warsaw
Italian oil and gas engineering company Saipem will lay the Baltic Pipe on the bottom of the Baltic Sea, Poland’s state- owned gas grid operator Gaz-System said on May 4.
The €2.1bn Baltic Pipe will carry gas from the Norwegian Sea – where another Polish state-controlled company PGNiG has exploration and production concessions – via Denmark to Poland, starting in 2022. The pipeline is a key gas infrastructure project Poland needs in order to reduce its dependence on Russian gas imports.
Warsaw currently has a long-term gas supply contract with Russia’s Gazprom that expires the same year the Baltic Pipe will go online. Poland keeps hinting the contract will not be renewed.
Gazprom recently lost arbitration over prices it had been charging Poland for its gas.
Warsaw has long seen its dependence on Russian gas as
a liability and with the Baltic Pipe in operation in less than two years from now, it is about to have the infrastructure to reduce or even end it.
Since 2015, Poland has operated an LNG terminal in the western town of Swinoujscie, taking in gas under contracts
with Qatar or the US. The terminal’s capacity is currently 5bn cubic metres (bcm) a year but it is being expanded to 7.5 bcm.
Poland also aims to build another LNG terminal in Gdansk that will handle 4 bcm of LNG, starting in 2025.
An estimated 4 bcm of domestic production can be added to imports from non-Russian sources Poland expects to secure, covering its demand for around 17 bcm of natural gas annually by 2022, of which two-thirds is currently covered by Gazprom.
The Baltic Pipe’s investors are Gaz-System and its Danish peer Energinet.
Saipem is expected to begin work in the second half of 2020 by preparing landfall work sites in Poland and Denmark and launching the pipeline’s route surveys.
“Vessels preparing the seabed for pipeline installation will mobilise in the Baltic in the first half of next year. Pipelay as such will start in the summer of 2021. The pipeline handover for operation is planned in October 2022,” Gaz-System said in a statement.
The value of the contract is PLN 280mn.
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Contents
Top stories
Russia’s top retail and tech companies
March 2020
www.intellinews.com
@bneintellinews
join forces to hunt for innovations in rest of the world
Ukraine-born startups raised more than half a billion dollars in 2019 Russian video streaming platforms gain speed
Cloud services take off in Russia SEMrush to SEO success
Leaders
Russia’s internet giant Yandex announces growing and more diversified revenues in 2019 Russian telecom major Rostelecom misses on earnings in 4Q19, cash flow solid
Investment
the
2
4
5 6 8
9
10 12
13
Russia’s top retail and tech companies
join forces to hunt for innovations in
the rest of the world
BAs Russia’s retail and tech sectors consolidate, the leading companies are turned their gaze outwards to hunt for
World Bank approves $35mn project
to modernise Kyrgyz tax administration and statistical system 13 Romanian online home decoration
retailer raises €3.5mn in bonds 14 Russian billionaires Abramovich, Gutseriev, said to invest in Telegram
crypto project TON 14 Russian fund Da Vinci Capital gets
€30mn from Germany’s DEG to invest
in Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan 15
Fintech & E-commerce 16
Russian e-commerce major
Wildberries to add self-employed
vendor products to offering 16 Russian Dixy retailer to launch online sales with Ozon 17 Valuation of Sistema’s e-commerce
asset Ozon boosted to $1.8bn 17
Telecom 19
Makedonski Telekom’s net profit
up 6% y/y in 2019 19 Romanian telco Digi grows by double
digit rates in 2019 19 Russia could postpone 5G rollout
from 2022 to 2024 20
NIBs 21
bne:Tech
new technology and innovation.
See page 2
Ukraine-born startups raised more
than half a billion dollars in 2019
In 2019, the venture capital and private equity funding volume for Ukrainian and Ukrainian-founded tech startups reached $544mn (up from $323mn in 2018 and $265mn in 2017), says AVentures Capital’s latest industry report ”DealBook of Ukraine”,
reports Adrien Henni of Ukraine Digital News. See page 4
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