PLOCK, Poland (AP) – The Polish and Ukrainian presidents on Wednesday announced plans for a five-country energy summit to discuss transporting Caspian Sea oil westward via Ukraine as their nations try to reduce their dependance on Russian supplies.
Polish President Lech Kaczynski said after meeting his Ukrainian counterpart, Viktor Yushchenko, that they hoped to meet in May with leaders from Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Georgia.
Kaczynski said they envision “a great undertaking to import oil from … Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan through Georgia, Ukraine to Poland.” He said the prospects for the project “look very optimistic.”
Kaczynski’s talks with Yushchenko focused on plans to extend Ukraine’s 670-kilometer (410-mile) Odessa-Brody oil pipeline to Plock, home to the main refinery of Polish oil giant PKN Orlen.
Orlen currently relies entirely on supplies from Russia.
Kaczynski said that oil from the Caspian Sea region could be pumped to the Baltic port of Gdansk, where it could then be shipped onward to Western Europe.
He said that the 1 billion tons of oil currently processed in Poland per year and some 6 billion tons processed in Ukraine “do not satisfy our needs” and said there was a need for more supplies.
Yushchenko, on a one-day visit to Plock, said at a joint news conference that the project was “one of the biggest projects discussed in Eastern Europe,” and a big chance for Ukraine to develop economically and increase its position in Europe.
Poland, which was once a Soviet satellite, and Ukraine, which was once a part of the Soviet Union, are both pushing to end their heavy dependence on Russian energy supplies.
Concerns about the reliability of Russian oil and gas supplies increased after Moscow early this year cut off supplies to pipelines running through Belarus and Ukraine to Europe in pricing disputes with those countries.
