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Posted on 08/27/2022 9:19:54 PM PDT by 11th_VA
WARSAW/BOGDANKA, POLAND — In Poland's late summer heat, dozens of cars and trucks line up at the Lubelski Wegiel Bogdanka coal mine, as people fearful of winter shortages wait for days to stock up on heating fuel in queues reminiscent of communist times.
Artur, 57, a pensioner, drove up from Swidnik, some 30 kilometers from the mine in eastern Poland on Tuesday, hoping to buy several tons of coal for himself and his family.
"Toilets were put up today, but there's no running water," he said, after three nights of sleeping in his small red hatchback in a crawling queue of trucks, tractors towing trailers and private cars.
"This is beyond imagination; people are sleeping in their cars. I remember the communist times, but it didn't cross my mind that we could return to something even worse."
Artur's household is one of the 3.8 million in Poland that rely on coal for heating and now face shortages and price 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 an immediate effect in April, while the bloc mandated fading them out by August.
While Poland produces over 50 million tons from its own mines every year, imported coal, much of it from Russia, is a household staple because of competitive prices and the fact that Russian coal is sold in lumps more suitable for home use.
Soaring demand has forced Bogdanka and other state-controlled mines to ration sales or offer the fuel to individual buyers via online platforms, in limited amounts. Artur, who did not want to give his full name, said he had collected paperwork from his extended family in the hope of picking up all their fuel allocations at once.
The mine planned to sell fuel for some 250 households Friday and would continue sales over the weekend to cut waiting times, Dorota Choma, a representative for the Bogdanka mine told Reuters.
The limits are in place to prevent hoarding and profiteering, or even selling spots in the queue, Choma said.
Like all Polish coal mines, Bogdanka typically sells most of the coal it produces to power plants. Last year, it sold less than 1% of its output to individual clients so it lacks the logistics to sell fuel directly to retail buyers.
Lukasz Horbacz, head of the Polish Coal Merchant Chamber of Commerce, said the decline in Russian imports began in January when Moscow started using rail tracks for military transport.
"But the main reason for the shortages is the embargo that went into immediate effect. It turned the market upside down," he told Reuters.
A spokesperson for the Weglokoks, a state-owned coal trader tasked by the government to boost imports from other countries declined to comment, while the climate ministry was not available for comment. Government officials have repeatedly said Poland would have enough fuel to meet demand.
In recent years, Poland has been the most vocal critic of EU climate policy and a staunch defender of coal that generates as much as 80% of its electricity. But coal output has steadily declined as the cost of mining at deeper levels increases.
Coal consumption has held mostly steady, prompting a gradual rise in imports. In 2021, Poland imported 12 million tons of coal, of which 8 million tons came from Russia and were used by households and small heating plants.
In July, Poland ordered two state-controlled companies to import several million tons of the fuel from other sources including Indonesia, Colombia and Africa, and introduced subsidies for homeowners facing a doubling or tripling of coal prices from last winter.
"As much as 60% of those that use coal for heating may be affected by energy poverty," Horbacz said.
Back at Bogdanka, Piotr Maciejewski, 61, a local farmer who joined the queue Tuesday, said he was prepared for a long wait.
"My tractor stays in line, I'm going home to get some sleep," he said.
Aren’t sanctions wonderful?
/s
Everybody in Poland better be bad this year so Santa will bring them all buckets of coal for Christmas looks like they might need them...
All of Europe is in for a bleak, cold winter.
Thank Joe Biden for this.
They should just buy it from Russia. Commerce is the route to peace. Nursing grudges is the route to war.
Sort of.
Commerce can be the road to servitude.
War can be the road to superiority....but it is HELL.
Ping
I remember coal heat….ugh !!!
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My son had a coal stove for heating one of his houses.
It can be messy if not handled correctly, but the coal stove heat, like wood heat, is awesome.
We had a coal furnace in the basement and lived in a third floor apartment.
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Nah, who is the servant? The seller comes to depend on the income, and the customer has the power to quit buying.
War really doesn’t create much peace unless it is in the aftermath of a giant war briefly.
But usually the seeds of the next war are sown.
The Poles have decided to be angry about things from decades ago (and conveniently forget their foul deeds). They will gain no superiority. They will gain standing in line for days to buy a lump of coal and they will have a cold winter.
Whatever... I’ll be ok.
In communist times, coal miners in Poland were paid more than doctors.
How did that work out?
One of the houses I lived in had a big old octopus furnace and a coal chute but it had been converted to natural gas before we moved in.
My parents finally got rid of the monster and had a regular NG furnace installed.
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No thanks to Biden, Zelensky and Nato Leaders - who could have prevented this long beforehand.
We had one of those furnaces when I was growing up but it was oil.
The thing broke down in every cold spell, like clockwork.
Good thing we lived in an old Victorian that had fireplaces.
I’m very concerned for the planet and burning more coal is a serious issue that Gretalocks needs to address...
Commerce is the route to peace. Nursing grudges is the route to war.
Putin must not have gotten the memo. Russia was the world's #13 exporter in 2021, including to Ukraine, yet chose nursing grudges over peaceful and profitable commerce.
Leading Export Countries
Russia's Export Partners 2021
She is a wench. His dare she.
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