VILNIUS - Baltic leaders have intensified consultations on a series of ambitious energy distribution projects that aim to connect the entire region with the power grids in Poland and Finland.
The projects, which together will cost hundreds of millions of euros, will essentially create a power-transmission line running from Helsinki to Warsaw and will decrease dependency on Russian energy and ease the costly transition of closing the nuclear power plant in Ignalina.
Meeting at different places, Baltic ministers stressed the need to expedite realization of two projects, both of which will rely upon outside financing. Lithuanian Prime Minister Algirdas Brazauskas and his Polish counterpart, Marek Belka, met in Warsaw on Jan. 28 to discuss their end of the project 's a high-voltage link between the neighboring countries.
Lithuania finally convinced Poland in December that the two should submit a joint declaration to the European Commission in order to increase their chances of winning finance.
According to estimations by EBRD experts, the project is valued at about 1.49 billion litas (434 million euros). Lithuania and Poland will have to front about one-third of that, while the EU will come up with the remainder.
However, the two countries have yet to submit a joint statement on the energy link's financial and technical parameters. But Lithuanian officials said that an upcoming meeting among specialists will hammer out the details.
"We are pinning great hopes on that meeting. An agreement on implementation and sources of funding will mean a go-ahead," Jonas Kazlauskas, deputy director of the Lithuanian Energy Agency, told the Baltic News Service. He said no further meetings would depend on Brussels.
Lithuania hopes that its section of the line to Poland will be finished before the shutdown of Ignalia Nuclear Power Plant's second unit in late 2009.
Farther north, Estonian Prime Minister Juhan Parts and Latvian PM Aigars Kalvitis met in Riga on Jan. 29, where they agreed to begin construction of an undersea cable between Estonia and Finland. Both men also emphasized the importance of deepening bilateral cooperation in the field of energy.
It is estimated that the 350-megawatt undersea cable will cost 110 million euros and be completed by the end of this year. The cable will link a 330 kV substation at Harku near Tallinn and a 400 kV substation at Espoo on the southern coast of Finland.
On the subject of regional cooperation, the prime ministers commended an Estonian-Latvian work group formed last year on continuing efforts to join the Valga-Valka border with the Gulf of Riga.
