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Mon, 24 Nov, 2014 12:00:55 AM FTimes- Xinhua Report, Nov. 24  Photo AFP-Lehtikuva. Lithuanian energy market has already changed, due to the new liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal in the port city Klaipeda, Lithuanian officials say.
"The terminal has drawn the line which can't be crossed, in terms of gas price," Rokas Masiulis, Lithuanian Minister of Energy, said earlier this week, while speaking at the Baltic energy forum in capital Vilnius, organized by business daily Verslo Zinios.
"From now on, discussions on gas prices should be based on economic terms and no other terms will be available in these discussions," he added.
Starting from 2017, the price of gas supplied from the LNG facility in Klaipeda should decrease, Masiulis noted.
Gas prices for consumers should decrease in the near future and the price for heating, produced from the natural gas, will not go up, Klaipedos Nafta (Klaipeda's Oil), the operator of LNG terminal, said in a statement released earlier this week.
The company referred to Lithuanian National Commission for Energy Control and Prices (NCECP) which had earlier set tariffs for LNG terminal services for 2015.
Tariffs and energy prices are among the most sensitive issues in Lithuania which had been 100 percent dependent on Russian gas until the first shipments of LNG gas reached the country's transmission system just a week ago.
According to the officials, the country had been paying more than its EU counterparts and even Baltic neighbors for the Russian gas.
Klaipeda's LNG terminal has already served its purpose, said Matthew James Bryza, former U.S. diplomat for European and Eurasian Affairs, in an interview with local website vz.lt.
"The terminal has pushed Gazprom to reduce price for gas, transmitted by pipelines to Lithuania," he noted.
While Lithuania is proud to be the first from the Baltic countries to build its own LNG terminal, it is not the only one which sees the LNG as the fastest and most direct way to the energy independence.
Finland and Estonia reached an agreement on November 17 to build two LNG terminals, connected by pipeline across the Gulf of Finland by 2019.
Algirdas Butkevicius, Lithuanian Prime Minister, welcomed the agreement and said that Lithuania's LNG facility will be able to supply the future Finish-Estonian terminals with gas.
"I do welcome (construction of Finish-Estonian terminals), because Estonia's negotiations with Finland have been going on probably for some two years now," Butkevicius said in a parliamentary session this week.
"I think that our FSRU (floating gas storage and regasification unit) will be able to supply this terminal with gas and, of course, if the gas price is different, it will also be possible to use pipelines, which have to be built in the Baltic countries," the PM added.
The Klaipeda LNG terminal will have an annual capacity of 1 billion cubic meters of gas in the first year of operation in 2015, to be increased to about 4 billion cubic meters in the future.
Klaipeda's LNG terminal will start its operations officially on December 3.
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