BRUSSELS, Oct. 11 (UPI) -- The European Union is putting pressure on Warsaw to break the Russian grip on the country's energy sector, a European commissioner's spokeswoman said.
A proposed natural gas deal between Poland and Moscow could be illegal under European laws that require outside parties to have access to national gas transit systems, The New York Times reports.
Poland imports about 265 billion cubic feet of natural gas from Russia each year. Warsaw, however, is courting Eastern European allies in an effort to diversify its energy sector.
A deal under consideration would tie Poland to Russian gas resources exclusively for the next quarter century.
The government in Belarus, meanwhile, was in talks with Poland and Lithuania to get liquefied natural gas from non-Russian sources in a bid to reduce the dependency on Moscow for gas.
Marlene Holzner, a spokeswoman for European Energy Commissioner Gunther Oettinger, said Europe wanted to see transparency in the Polish energy sector.
"What we want is a level playing ground," she told the Times.
The European community is eager to break the Russian stranglehold on the regional energy sector after much of Europe was left in the cold for weeks in January 2009 after Moscow cut vital gas supplies through Ukraine because of contract and debt disputes.
