Lithuanian PM: LNG Project and New Pipeline Both Valuable to Lithuania

Lithuanian Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius has said that Lithuania's linking of its gas grids to Poland via a new pipeline will not affect the development of an LNG terminal project in the country.

Last week, Polish company Gaz-System and Lithuanian company Lietuvos Dujos announced that the companies would be working to create a new pipeline to link the two countries' gas systems together. However, yesterday Prime Minister Kubilius said that the construction of this pipeline would not see the country abandon a planned liquefied natural gas terminal.

"I think both of them are not mutually exclusive projects, only their timing might differ," the Baltic Course reports him as saying.

"We need alternatives as soon as possible, at the end of 2014 (and) the diversity of various connections, terminals and an opportunity to have an alternative and be fully integrated into the European gas system are what we are aiming at. We work on that very consistently. The more pipes, the more alternatives, the better it is for our country."

The construction of the new pipeline between Poland and Lithuania is due to be completed by 2018, at an initial cost of €471 million. Poland will bear the largest per cent of the cost, with 73 per cent of the investment to be taken on the Polish side.