Arvydas Sekmokas, Lithuania's energy minister. Source: Herkus Milaševičius Photography
Two decades after achieving independence from the Soviet Union, Lithuania is still struggling to achieve energy independence. It appears to have taken some significant steps in that direction recently.
First, it managed to get the foreign shareholders of Lietuvos Dujos, a Lithuanian natural gas company, to agree to divide the utility into three separate units as per an EU directive on unbundling energy monopolies and introducing competition. Russia’s Gazprom, a 37% shareholder, relented in its opposition just a couple days ago. It now appears Gazprom will hang onto a stake in the gas supplier and one distribution company while the Lithuanian government gets control over a new, larger distribution company. Energy Minister Arvydas Sekmokas told the press that this will allow for cheaper gas imports from numerous places. His country currently gets all its natural gas from Russia.
And Lithuania’s government has given its approval for a liquefied natural gas terminal, a new nuclear power plant (with a 7 billion euro price tag), and new cables to Sweden and Poland that will facilitate power grid synchronization with western Europe. The LNG terminal is another tool for Lithuania to use in breaking Gazprom’s monopoly.
Meanwhile, the proposed 1350 megawatt reactor in Visaginas, which will eventually supply power across the Baltic region, has received cabinet approval and now goes to parliament for the necessary legislation and funding. Lithuania used to be self-sufficient in electricity, but in 2009, it shut down the Soviet-era Ignalina plant. To restore that capacity, the government is working with with Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy to get the new plant online around 2020-2022. The original price was 5 billion euros, but the Finance Ministry has said in a statement that the final cost is creeping to the 6.8 billion euro mark.
Reuters says, “Around 4 billion euros would be borrowed and the rest would come from the countries backing the project, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, as well as Hitachi. Under the agreement backed by the government, Lithuania would have 38 percent of the plant, Estonia 22 percent, Latvia 20 percent and Hitachi 20 percent. Poland was originally part of the project, but dropped out. Energy Minister Arvydas Sekmokas said the door remained open for Poland to re-join.” Recent studies have shown that Poland may have the biggest and best deposits of shale gas in Europe, and the government appears comfortable with fracking to release it. To what extent this has affected Warsaw’s view of the nuclear plant project is hard to say.
