Business: The small seaport crucial for Europe's energy future

 Business: The small seaport crucial for Europe's energy future 

"This has put us in the firing-line," says Józef, a 60-year old taxi driver from the Warszów area of Świnoujście.

His coastal town is home to Poland's biggest liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal - which some bill as the country's best shot at energy independence.

Although locals like Józef fear this may make it a target for Russia's unpredictable president, Vladimir Putin.

Up until this year Russia was supplying 40% of the European Union's natural gas, but after the bloody invasion of Ukraine in February everyone in this part of Europe is nervous about supplies from Russia.

The threat is hard to imagine, as we wind along narrow roads through a pine forest that runs along the beach. Shafts of sunlight glint on industrial machinery parked along the way to the terminal.

But Poland is banking heavily on this sleepy, northwestern Baltic port to bail it out of a catastrophic energy fix.

The Lech Kaczyński terminal is integral to replacing lost Russian gas, after Gazprom halted supplies to Poland in April.

European gas prices have soared in June. Germany has moved one step closer to rationing gas for consumers and Italy joined a host of European countries reporting further cuts in Russian supplies.

Meanwhile, back at the Kaczyński terminal workers are busy laying foundations for a concrete shaft to link a third cylinder to unloading berths about half a kilometre away at the coast.

LNG arrives at the berths on tankers from all over the world - mainly Qatar and the US, but also Norway, and occasionally as far afield as Nigeria or Trinidad and Tobago.