European Commission finances the construction works in the project for enhancement of Latvia - Lithuania gas pipe capacity
The Innovation and Networks Executive Agency of the European Commission has approved granting the resources to the project for enhancement of Latvia - Lithuania gas pipe capacity. It’s planned that the total investment sum in this project shall be 10.2 Million euro, 5.5 million euro whereof shall be passed to Latvian transmission operator JSC "Conexus Baltic Grid".
The European Commission, as part of Connecting Europe Facility (CEF), shall grant EU support to enhance the Latvia-Lithuania gas pipe connection capacity. The support shall make 50% of the project costs.
In this June, the unified natural gas operator JSC “Conexus Baltic Grid” and Lithuanian transmission system operator "Amber Grid" presented a project application about the increase of funding to enhance the Latvia-Lithuania gas pipe connection capacity.
Access to Klaipeda Liquefied Gas Terminal, Latvia Inčukalns Underground Gas Storage and Poland-Lithuania gas interconnection which is planned to be launched in 2022 will be facilitated through enhancement of transmission capacity between Lithuania and Latvia.
Zane Kotāne, Chairperson of the Board of JSC “Conexus Baltic Grid” informs: “Project for enhancement of Lithuania-Latvia interconnection capacity is important for the whole Baltic Region and Finland, and it affects several current natural gas infrastructure projects. This proves that the improvement of natural gas infrastructure doesn’t stop at the border of one country. On the contrary – it is possible to reach maximal natural gas infrastructure improvements when international projects are planned consecutively and are integrated with each other. In this case, also natural gas system users get maximum benefit. Enhancement of Lithuania – Latvia interconnection will affect the operation of Inčukalns Underground Gas Storage, Klaipeda Liquefied Gas Terminal, Poland – Lithuania interconnection, and also the future unified natural gas market which starts its work already in next January. The aim of the project is to increase the capacity of Lithuania – Latvia interconnection by 70-80% on average achieving this with improvements in the existing infrastructure.”
The feasibility of Enhancement of the Latvian – Lithuanian Interconnection project and cost-benefit analysis carried out in 2018 showed that larger capacity is needed satisfy the regional gas market demand and guarantee the security of gas supply after gas connections are built between Finland and Estonia and between Poland and Lithuania.
It’s envisaged that Enhancement of the Latvian – Lithuanian Interconnection project will be implemented till the end of 2023. It’s planned to continue the project implementation after project funding is received.
Public tenders regarding the designing and construction works in the territory of Latvia will be announced soon.
The works planned during the project on part of Latvia will be the reconstruction of individual stages of the main gas pipeline to increase the maximum operating pressure from 40 to 50 bars. Through investments, the capacity of gas interconnection will be increased to 130.47 GWh a day in direction to Latvia (currently 67.6 GWh a day) and to 119.5 GWh a day in the direction of Lithuania (currently 65.1 GWh a day).
The project is included in the list of EU projects of common interest, the ten-year development plan of European Network of Transmission System Operators for Gas (ENTSOG) and priority plan of National main electricity and gas transmission projects implementation.