Lithuania ponders gas storage facility

  • 2005-08-31
  • From wire reports
VILNIUS - Lithuania may build an underground natural gas storage facility in the region of Telsiai in order to assure the reliability of gas supply and balance seasonal demand.


Raimundas Paliukas, president of the Lithuanian Gas Association, which coordinates the facility project, said that the storage facility is of utmost necessity for Lithuania. EU directives also stipulate the necessity of the project, he stressed.

"If the supply of gas via Belarus is disturbed, the stocks of natural gas in the pipelines would only suffice for a fortnight. We need stockpiles for two months," Paliukas told the Vakaru Ekspresas regional daily.

Contracted by Lithuanian companies Dujotekana and Geonafta, Germany's ESK has already conducted a feasibility study concerning the construction of a gas storage facility in western Lithuania. The facility could be completed in approximately six-years.

Construction would cost some 150 million euros, and the facility would break even in about 16 years.