Poland says will not tax shale gas output until 2020

Poland will not collect taxes on the production of shale gas until 2020 to make its extraction more financially attractive after several foreign players quit the Polish market in the past few months, the finance minister said. Poland’s government is determined to make a success of shale gas to cut its dependence on natural gas imported from former occupier Russia, but attracting investors grew harder after the country drastically scaled back estimates for reserves. ExxonMobil, Canada’s Talisman Energy and US oil firm Marathon, all quit their Polish shale gas operations, with some of them citing uncertainty about the regulatory environment as a factor. “The law on the taxation of shale gas will go into effect in 2015, but we will not levy the tax until 2020 to attract companies to extract shale gas,” Finance Minister Jacek Rostowski said in a speech on Wednesday. The ministry has previously said taxes and levies on gas and oil exploration would total about 40% of the sector’s profits from 2015.