Lietuvos Energija News

Lithuania has given the go ahead to state-owned Klaipedos Nafta to purchase a liquefied natural gas (LNG) storage vessel by late 2024, as it shores up energy supplies and reduces its reliance on Russian natural gas.Klaipedos Nafta is currently leasing a floating storage and regasification unit (FSRU), called Independence, from Norway's Hoegh LNG.The use of the vessel has allowed Lithuania to import LNG since 2014, breaking the monopoly Russia's Gazprom had on natural gas supply to the country as well as neighboring Latvia and Estonia."This will keep us able…

Lithuania's state-owned gas trader Lietuvos Duju Tiekimas (LDT) said on Monday it had signed a deal to buy liquefied natural gas (LNG) directly from the United States for the first time and expects to receive a delivery in the second half of August. The deal is with a unit of Cheniere Energy and is part Lithuania's efforts to diversify its gas suppliers and reduce its reliance on Russia's Gazprom. LDT, part of state-owned energy group Lietuvos Energija, signed a deal last year with Koch Supply & Trading for LNG supplies throughout 2017. Cheniere Energy was expected to supply LNG from a U.S. field, an LDT spokesman told Reuters. "It will be the first time Lithuania imports gas from the U.S.," he said.

Norway's Statoil will supply small-scale liquefied natural gas (LNG) to terminals in the Baltic Sea through Lithuania's Klaipeda LNG terminal, a company official said on Thursday. The move comes after the energy firm signed an agreement on Thursday with Litgas and Lietuvos Duju Tiekimas, gas trading subsidiaries of Lithuanian state-owned energy group Lietuvos Energija, to balance the gas supplies at the Klaipeda terminal. "If I'm sitting here in five years and this is a success story, I hope that we are churning three to five conventional cargos annually into this market", Statoil's head of LNG operations Ingvar Skogseide told reporters. Reporting by Andrius Sytas

Liquefied natural gas (LNG) price from Norwegian company Statoil ASA for Lithuania is set to fall by more than one-third and the Klaipeda LNG terminal's maintenance costs are to decline by around 23% after Lithuania's gas trade company Litgas completed talks with the Norwegian supplier on a revision of their long-term gas purchase contract, reports LETA/BNS. According to Dalius Misiunas, CEO of the state energy group Lietuvos Energija (Lithuanian Energy), the price will go down to around 16-20 euros per megawatt-hour (MWh) under the new deal with Statoil, from around 27-30 euros currently. "We can't disclose the exact figures (...) under the agreement with Statoil. We estimate that the (price) range could be between 16 and 20 euros per MWh," Misiunas said at a news conference on Monday.

Lithuania has put plans to buy liquefied natural gas from the United States on hold because the LNG is not yet suitable for the Baltic state's gas system, its state energy company said on Wednesday. Lithuania's system was built to use Russian gas and state energy group Lietuvos Energija said U.S. LNG was much more calorific than Russian gas. The country opened an LNG import terminal in the Baltic Sea at the end of 2014, which allowed it to start importing from Norway and end its total dependence on gas imports from its former Soviet master, Russia. "We are not buying gas from the U.S. at the moment, because the gas they are offering at the moment does not meet specifications needed for our gas distribution system," Ernesta Dapkiene, a spokeswoman for Lietuvos Energija, told Reuters.

Natural gas supply and trading company Litgas, part of Lithuania's state owned energy holding Lietuvos Energija, and Statoil, leading global energy company in oil and gas production, signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on July 2nd in Vilnius, Lithuania regarding establishment of a joint venture company in Lithuania to develop small scale LNG bunkering services. The new joint venture company is planned to be established in Lithuania later this year and would supply LNG as a fuel to ships, small terminals in the Baltic Sea, and transport LNG by trucks to on-shore customers. Statoil has a contract with Litgas to deliver 0.5 billion cubic meters of gas per year to Lithuania’s LNG terminal at Klaipeda port in 2014.

Lithuania's state-owned energy group Lietuvos Energija said on Monday national rules had to be changed to allow it to sell some liquefied natural gas (LNG) cargoes it had contracted from Norway's Statoil in the global market as domestic demand falls. Lithuania opened an LNG import terminal last year seeking to reduce its dependence on former Soviet master Russia and to diversify supplies, including buying LNG from the United States in the future. To prevent Russia's Gazprom from dumping prices and keeping the terminal idle, the government has imposed a minimum level of LNG the country's regulated heat and power producers have to buy. But even this minimum volume -- 540 million cubic metres (mcm) per year or the equivalent of six or seven cargoes -- appears too big as consumption falls.

Lithuania seeks to cut dependence on Russia; Statoil to supply 0.54 bcm of gas per year. This will cover about 20 pct of Lithuania's demand. Lithuania signed its first liquefied natural gas purchase deal with Norway's Statoil on Thursday, helping the country to reduce its total dependence on Russian supplies. The Baltic state plans to import 0.54 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas from Norway from 2015, enough to meet about one-fifth of its total consumption. The gas will supply a floating LNG terminal, named the "Independence". The total value of the contract is estimated at a little over $1 billion and the LNG price is linked to Britain's National Balancing Point (NBP) gas hub, Lithuanian importer Litgas said.

Lithuania will seek to buy up to 170,000 cubic meters of liquefied natural gas on a spot basis to test its LNG import terminal, which is expected to come online in December, the company in charge of the project said on Thursday. Klaipedos Nafta has signed a 10-year agreement with Norway's Hoegh LNG to lease a floating gas storage and regasification vessel, which will serve as an import terminal at the Baltic Sea port city of Klaipeda. Majority state-owned Klaipedos Nafta said in the agenda for its July 3 shareholder meeting that it expects to pay up to 112 million litas ($44 million) for the test LNG shipment. Litgas, the gas trading arm of Lithuanian energy group Lietuvos Energija…