Gazprom Launches Baltic Gas Tender
Russian gas export monopoly Gazprom will auction gas for delivery to the Baltic States – Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia – in the middle of this month, it said late February. It will offer over 560mn m³ and delivery will take place in Q2-4 of this year, at the Kotlovka gas metering station on the Belarus-Lithuania border. Gazprom will also offer the option of delivery from Incukalns, the Latvian storage facility.
More detailed information about the auction, conditions of participation and related documents, will be published on its website, it said.
This sales mechanism supplements the system of long-term contracts that provide energy security to Europe, it said.
Gazprom Export carried out the first gas auction in September 2015, with deliveries taking place at other points in Europe over this winter, including at the landfall of the Nord Stream pipeline.
Not all the gas available was sold, but 15 customers in all bought over 1.2bn m³.
According to industry association Eurogas, 2014 gas consumption in the three Baltic states was 4.4bn m3, of which Estonia consumed 0.6bn m3, Latvia 1.3bn m3 and Lithuania 2.5bn m3. Since the opening of an LNG import terminal at Klaipeda in Lithuania in late 2014, the region for the first time has access to non-Russian gas imports, with Norway's Statoil the contractual supplier of 0.54bn m3/yr (about 8 LNG cargoes per year) to Lithuanian state Litgas.
William Powell