About 55% of over 14 million Polish households live in multi-family buildings. Cooperative or housing association buildings have a large share in this group. The heat is supplied from the district heating network or from local sources. With respect to facilities fed from gas boiler rooms, the signing and execution of fuel supply contracts is required. From October 1, 2017, the obligation to submit tariffs for gas trading set for all final customers (except for individual gas consumers in households) for approval to the President of the Energy Regulatory Office was lifted. Decisions regarding the choice of the supplier and the content of the concluded contract are made by the authorized bodies of the cooperative or housing association. The consequences of such decisions are borne by the owners and users of residential premises. Ensuring the continuity of a contract for the supply of gaseous fuel essentially comes down to establishing prices and rates in force for a given period. The right decision on the moment of signing the contract or the amendment, termination of the existing contract and signing a new one, or negotiation efficiency will result in financial profits for all users. The costs of heating and domestic hot water preparation are a significant component of the overall cost of the maintenance of flats in Poland. Therefore, it is even more important that the prices and rates agreed upon with the gas supplier are as favorable as possible to users. The high costs of heat are not only expenses for apartment owners. The attractiveness of flat on the rental market is also decreasing. The business activity carried out in facilities located in such buildings is also less competitive.

The authors of the article analyzed gas prices on the Polish market over the last 3 years and presented the results of simulations of the effects of specific prices and rates set in the contract for the supply of fuel at the cost of heating from the point of view of a single apartment. As these are not large amounts per year, they do not motivate to optimize the terms of the gas purchase contract in this respect. The dynamics of changes in gas prices in Poland, although slightly different from world trends, is high. This makes it difficult for those responsible to make the decisions, and for residential users, it often means spending differences in subsequent years. One of the consequences of setting prices and rates significantly higher than obtainable may also be the reluctance of local communities to take measures to increase the energy efficiency of the heat supply system. From the point of view of heating costs, such decisions may distort the economic effect of thermo-modernization.

The role and importance of energy security increases with the development of civilization, whose inherent element has become the demand for energy and its carriers. The article discusses the issue of cooperation in the field of energy security in Central Europe at the moment of finishing work on the North-South Corridor, which changes the existing gas architecture in the region. In order to better understand the situation in the region, the energy systems of the Visegrad Group countries, identical to the Central European region, have been analysed, according to the definition of the World Bank and OECD. Considering the historical and geopolitical connections of the Visegrad Group’s fate, it is important to create a common gas market. The physical interconnection of gas systems greatly increases energy security in this region. Moreover, thanks to the construction of LNG terminals in Poland and Croatia, it will be possible to diversify not only the routes, but also the sources of supply of this important raw material.

Underground gas storage facilities play an important part in the maintenance of balance between the constantly imported raw material and variable gas demand in the discussed part of Europe. They also allow for more the efficient operation of businesses which exploit this raw material in this part of Europe and operators of power lines.

The following issues will be discussed in the article: types, capacity, location and variability of the filling level of underground gas storage facilities in Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia; similarities and differences in the policy of natural gas storage between individual Visegrad Group countries; the influence of these differences on the situation in the gas market; the influence of the planned further reconstruction of the natural gas storage facilities system on the energy security of individual countries which belong to the Visegrad Group.

Concern for UGSF is one of the conditions of expansion of transmission pipelines to the north and south, increase of LNG import within the Visegrad Group, or the creation of a gas hub in Poland – initiatives aimed at, among others, securing the continuity of supplies to domestic users.

However, the current and planned investments indirectly indicate that in the policies of the governments of the Visegrad Group countries, UGSF are supposed to soon play a much smaller role than many researchers would expect. An intensive expansion of UGSF is very unlikely. The scale of the state’s effect on the role of storage facilities in supplying gas to users depends on the level of the state’s control over the companies managing UGSF.