At a time when the countries of Eastern Europe remain heavily dependent on Russia for gas and oil, Poland has started talks with Norway as a step toward diversifying its energy sources, the government's special envoy on energy said Wednesday.

Piotr Naimski, secretary of state at the Economy Ministry and the government's top expert on energy security, said he held talks in Oslo over the past few days about the possibility of building a pipeline from Norway to Poland.

The conservative government is also considering building a liquefied natural gas terminal at one of the ports on the Baltic Sea to allow gas shipments from a variety of producers, including Qatar, Naimski said. "We are now looking at ways to diversify our sources," he said in an interview in his Warsaw office.

The plans reflect a consensus within Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz's minority government that Russia can no longer be considered a reliable supplier of energy. That point appeared to be reinforced Wednesday when the Economy Ministry said Monday that Poland's chemical industry, one of the nation's largest consumers of imported gas, had its supplies from Russia reduced by a third as severe cold weather caused Gazprom, Russia's state-owned energy giant, to curtail gas deliveries to Europe.

"Our strategy," Naimski said, "is to secure new contracts and to start and conclude talks with other producers so as to establish security for our refineries with direct access to the fields."

The issue has taken on urgency since Gazprom briefly cut gas deliveries to Ukraine this month, triggering shortages in Europe and concern over Russian reliability. Those concerns increased last weekend when pipeline explosions halted Russian gas supplies to Georgia.

Poland relies on Russia for almost all of its oil and gas supplies. Naimski said Russia provides 97 percent of Poland's imports of crude oil, for example. "If we are talking about security of supply of these raw materials," he said, "we are talking about the need to diversify our sources. That means we are looking for other than Russian sources."

This is not the first time Poland has looked to Norway. An agreement involving a gas pipeline from Norway was negotiated by Poland in 2001. "The contracts had been signed and were waiting for final approval," said Naimski, who was involved in the deal. He said the plan was scrapped by the former Communist government led by Leszek Miller.

Diversification is also important to Poland because the country of 42 million people will need more energy in the coming years. Its annual gas consumption, 13.3 billion cubic meters, is expected to increase by about 5 billion cubic meters in four years, experts say.

"We want to renew the agreement with Norway," Naimski said. "It is reliable. It is closest to us, and the pipeline is technically feasible."

In addition to looking abroad to countries like Norway and Qatar, Poland could also upgrade its domestic black- and brown-coal industries. But that would require enormous expenditures, particularly to protect the environment.