In Poland, where coal is king, homeowners queue for days to buy fuel

By Marek Strzelecki and Kuba Stezycki

WARSAW/BOGDANKA (Reuters) – In Poland’s late summer time warmth, dozens of vehicles and vans line up on the Lubelski Wegiel Bogdanka coal mine, as house owners scared of winter shortages anticipate days and nights to refill on heating gasoline in queues harking back to communist instances.

Artur, 57, a pensioner, drove up from Swidnik, some 30 km (18 miles) from the mine in jap Poland on Tuesday, hoping to purchase a number of tonnes of coal for himself and his household.

“Bogs have been put up right this moment, however there isn’t any operating water,” he stated, after three nights of sleeping in his small crimson hatchback in a crawling queue of vans, tractors towing trailers and personal vehicles.

“That is past creativeness, persons are sleeping of their vehicles. I keep in mind the communist instances nevertheless it did not cross my thoughts that we might return to one thing even worse.”

Artur’s family is among the 3.8 million in Poland that depend on coal for heating and now face shortages and value hikes, after Poland and the European Union imposed an embargo on Russian coal following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February.

Poland banned purchases with a right away impact in April, whereas the bloc mandated fading them out by August.

Whereas Poland produces over 50 million tonnes from its personal mines yearly, imported coal, a lot of it from Russia, is a family staple due to aggressive costs and the truth that Russian coal is bought in lumps extra appropriate for dwelling use.

Hovering demand has compelled Bogdanka and different state-controlled mines to ration gross sales or supply the gasoline to particular person patrons by way of on-line platforms, in restricted quantities. Artur, who didn’t need to give his full identify, stated he had collected paperwork from his prolonged household within the hope of choosing up all their gasoline allocations without delay.

The mine deliberate to promote gasoline for some 250 households on Friday and would proceed gross sales over the weekend to chop ready instances, Dorota Choma, a spokeswoman for the Bogdanka mine advised Reuters.

The boundaries are in place to stop hoarding and profiteering, and even promoting spots within the queue, Choma stated.

Like all Polish coal mines, Bogdanka sometimes sells a lot of the coal it produces to energy vegetation. Final yr, it bought lower than 1% of its output to particular person purchasers so lacks the logistics to promote gasoline on to retail patrons.

Lukasz Horbacz, head of the Polish Coal Service provider Chamber of Commerce, stated the decline in Russian imports started in January when Moscow began utilizing rail tracks for army transport.

“However the primary purpose for the shortages is the embargo that went into speedy impact. It turned the market the other way up,” he advised Reuters.

A spokesman for the Weglokoks, a state-owned coal dealer tasked by the federal government to spice up imports from different international locations declined to remark, whereas the local weather ministry was not out there for remark. Authorities officers have repeatedly stated Poland would have sufficient gasoline to fulfill demand.

In recent times, Poland has been essentially the most vocal critic of EU local weather coverage and a staunch defender of coal that generates as a lot as 80% of its electrical energy. However coal output has steadily declined as the price of mining at deeper ranges will increase.

Coal consumption has held largely regular, prompting a gradual rise in imports. In 2021, Poland imported 12 million tonnes of coal, of which 8 million tonnes got here from Russia and utilized by households and small heating vegetation.

In July, Poland ordered two state-controlled firms to import a number of million tons of the gasoline from different sources together with Indonesia, Colombia and Africa, and launched subsidies for owners going through a doubling or tripling of coal costs from final winter.

“As a lot as 60% of people who use coal for heating could also be affected by vitality poverty,” Horbacz stated.

Again at Bogdanka, Piotr Maciejewski, 61, a neighborhood farmer who joined the queue on Tuesday, stated he was ready for an extended wait.

“My tractor stays in line, I am going dwelling to get some sleep,” he stated.

(Reporting by Marek Strzelecki and Kuba Stezycki, Enhancing by Ros Russell)