Turn towards the Baltic: the LPG market in mid-2025
26.8.2025
In view of the sanctions imposed in December on LPG from Russia, 2025 brought an earthquake from the perspective of the directions of supply to the Polish market and the means of transport used for this purpose. Although Russian gas remained on the Polish market, today prices are shaped by the American index. The fact that consumers practically did not feel this revolution is largely the merit of entrepreneurs.
According to customs data, imports of LPG liquefied gas in the first half of 2025 Decreased by about 10.5% compared to the same period last year. This is due not so much to a decrease in consumption, but rather to a decrease in re-exports to Ukraine, which from 2024 increasingly uses other directions of supply - in particular, Romania. In 6 months of 2025, the re-export of LPG from Poland fell by as much as 41%, from 208 thousand tons to 123 thousand tons, including to Ukraine from 120 thousand tons to 67 thousand tons.
Transports to Poland are currently diversified to an unprecedented extent, after the sanctions came into force in December 2024, the role of the largest supplier of liquefied gas from Russia was definitively taken over by Sweden. We wrote more about the backstage of the embargo in the Annual Report. The share of gas from Russia fell to less than 15% in the structure of imports - three times less than a year ago - and stabilized at about 20,000 tons per month. This volume is responsible for the import of the product CN29011000, that is saturated aliphatic hydrocarbons. In practice, butane and isobutane with a purity of more than 95% are imported under this code, which the Council of the European Union, under pressure from Hungary and Slovakia, exempted from restrictive measures. It is a product used in industrial processes - including the production of aerosols - and cannot be used as a fuel in this form. However, in the light of the current sanctions regulation, there are no formal obstacles to importing butane into the territory of the European Union and mixing it with propane of non-Russian origin, and then placing it on the fuel market. This situation was observed in the first quarter of 2025, which raised the concern of the public administration - all the more so since the operators importing pure butane, who declare that they will not use it for energy purposes, do not need to have a license to trade in fuels, but only a much simpler entry in the register of importing entities.
After a series of consultations with the market and inter-ministerial agreements, since April this year the tax services have taken measures to conduct a very detailed inspection of transports from Russia for the presence of the manufacturer on the European sanctions list, which led to an effective reduction of Russian imports in the 2nd quarter of this year.
Over the past year, the share of gas from the US and Norway has strengthened on the domestic market. The largest amount of fuel came to Poland directly from the USA in April - 23 thousand tons, but it is worth remembering that propane from Sweden is also predominantly recharged American gas. The share of deliveries from Kazakhstan is only 3.5%, which is less than from Germany and Belgium. The export of LPG from Kazakhstan is subject to restrictions, which is intended to ensure that fuel prices on the large domestic LPG market are kept at an attractive level for drivers; moreover, some Kazakh producers process their raw material at Russian refineries, which automatically puts them under the European embargo.
The largest recipient of LPG shipped from Poland abroad for the fourth year in a row remains Ukraine, but the share in the structure of re-exports from Poland fell to the lowest level since 2022. Historically, the most important customers of gas passing through Poland were Germany, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia. In the current year, Austria and Italy joined them, which together account for 1/4 of the re-exports from Poland.
Unlike in previous years, in the 1st half of 2025, imports of LPG liquefied gas to Poland dominated deliveries by sea, which accounted for 53.3% of total imports (589 thousand tonnes in 6 months) against 28% in 2024. The share of rail transport fell from 55% to 35% and by road tankers - from 13% to 6%. In this context, the data for the first half of 2026 will be interesting, which will answer the question whether the market's return to the Baltic is a permanent phenomenon.
On the recent European Liquefied Gas Congress In Katowice, Szymon Araszkiewicz spoke about the Polish LPG market in the first half of 2025:
