Vilnius, 18 May 2022 (TDI): The Minister of Energy of the Republic of Lithuania, Dainius Kreivys announced that the government of Lithuania has made a decision to ban Russian gas supplies to Lithuania by law.
Kreivys stated that only the suppliers that do not pose a threat to their national security will have the ability to use the Lithuanian gas transmission system as well as the LNG terminal.
@LithuanianGovt has just made a decision to ban russian gas supplies to 🇱🇹 by law. Only those suppliers that do not pose a threat to our national security will be able to use 🇱🇹 gas transmission system and LNG terminal. 🇱🇹 Parliament will soon authorise the decision.
— Dainius Kreivys (@DainiusKreivys) May 18, 2022
In addition to this, he said that the Lithuanian Parliament will soon authorize the decision. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Lithuania announced that it would stop buying Russian gas immediately and was the first European country to do so.
Both Lithuania and Poland recently opened a new pipeline that connects them to share gas. Thus, on the 1st of May, Kreivys announced that Russia had cut off gas supplies to Poland.
In spite of this, he stated that gas was being transferred from Lithuania to Poland through a newly commissioned Gas Interconnection Poland–Lithuania (GIPL) pipeline for the first time in history.
Lithuanian Efforts for Energy Independence
Previously the Baltic country pursued policies that allowed it to end deliveries of Russian gas last month. Therefore, Lithuania has worked on building infrastructure that provides energy independence from Russia.
Due to the history between the two countries, the Minister said in an interview that their history propelled Lithuania to work in breaking free from Russian oil and gas.
In relation to this, Lithuania spent its taxpayer money with the goal of breaking free. Thus, the country managed to stop its remaining gas purchases from Russia to protest the recent invasion of Ukraine.
Therefore, Lithuania ended its reliance on Russia’s oil years ago. This resulted from Lithuania hiring an American firm to build a new oil import terminal as a first step after Lithuania’s independence.
Consequently, despite buying expensive oil, Lithuania managed to be free from relying on the pipelines of Russia. During the 2000s, Lithuania joined the EU and NATO in 2004.
Thereby pressure on energy worsened as Russia began charging Lithuania significantly more than it did other European customers for natural gas.
All in all, it propelled Lithuania to scale up its efforts in breaking free and to draw up plans for a new terminal to import liquefied natural gas (LNG) using Baltic Sea shipments.
