PGNiG seeks price cut from Gazprom

WARSAW, Poland, Feb. 22 (UPI) -- A Polish natural gas distributor filed a lawsuit against Russian natural gas company Gazprom, saying it wanted a 10 percent cut in prices.

Polskie Gornictwo Naftowe i Gazownictwo filed a suit in an international court demanding Gazprom offer some relief to the estimated $500 paid for every 1,000 cubic meters of gas it gets from the Russian company, Bloomberg News reports, citing Polish media.

Gazprom said it was offering discounts to some European consumers, who pay roughly $400 per 1,000 cubic meters. PGNiG gets about 70 percent of its natural gas from Russia.

Pawel Burzynski, a banking analyst in Warsaw, told Bloomberg there was a "slim" chance Poland could get a lower gas price from Gazprom. It all depends, he said, on "Gazprom's good well."

Burzynski said Poland has few alternatives for natural gas. Warsaw, however, said it was looking to offset some of the gas it gets from Russia through development of domestic shale gas reserves.

The U.S. Energy Department's Energy Information Administration estimated Poland has at least 180 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in shale deposits, enough to meet domestic demand for more than 300 years.

In early February, however, Exxon Mobil announced that early efforts in shale gas exploration in Poland weren't lucrative enough for commercial production.