VILNIUS - The extreme vulnerability of Lithuania's natural gas supply was made painfully clear on the evening of Feb. 18, when shipments of the crucial resource from Belarus were cut off without warning.
For a period of almost 24 hours, the Russian gas giant Gazprom - without prior notification - suspended natural gas supplies via Belarusian territory, leaving a vast swath of land stretching from Germany to Lithuania without its main source of fuel for heating homes and firing plants.
The action came as talks between the Russian company and Belarus collapsed, with Moscow accusing Belarus of illegally tapping Gazprom's transport pipelines for its own uses.
While Gazprom promised to continue normal flows of gas to Western Europe via Ukraine, Lithuania, which receives almost all of its gas through Belarus, implemented an emergency scheme by which supply was diverted from Russia through Latvia.
"I would like to emphasize that this plan had been prepared well in advance, and Latvian infrastructure is modern enough that we received the amount of gas that had been expected," said Sigita Jukuniene, press secretary for Lietuvos Dujos, the country's main gas supplier.
This was the first time since independence that Lithuania obtained gas from its northern neighbor.
Nonetheless, during the time that Gazprom turned off the spigots, the Latvian contingency plan supplied only one-half of Lithuania's normal quantity of gas-200,000 cubic meters per hour compared with the usual 410,00 cubic meters per hour received through Belarus.
With Gazprom offering no sign of returning supplies to a normal level at the outset of the crisis, commercial consumers in Lithuania were asked to ration their usage of gas, and operations at heating plants and other strategic objects were saved only by their emergency reserves.
Achema, a fertilizer producer that purchases large quantities of gas directly from Gazprom, announced on Feb. 24 its intention to negotiate compensation from the supplier for damages incurred during the disruption.
While no figures are yet available as to the economic harm caused as a result of the disruption, Lithuanians were given a humbling reminder of their economic vulnerability to such disputes between Russia and Belarus.
"We can pass any law we like, but in the end the situation doesn't depend on us at all," said Vladas Gagilas, director of the energy resources department at the Economy Ministry.
According to Gagilas, Lithua-nia has no choice other than to remain an idle observer as disputes between Moscow and Minsk threaten to generate further disruptions in gas supply.
"There are no plans at the moment to look for a different source of gas. The fact is that there are no other possibilities for supply," Gagilas said candidly.
With Lithuanian energy essentially kept hostage to events to the east, both government and industry agree that the only safeguard is for commercial consumers to maintain ample reserve supplies, which is mandated by law.
"We urge all of our customers to comply with the law and keep reserves. Achema and customers who receive gas directly from [gas importer] Dujotekana have been urged to do the same," Jukuniene said.
"Consumers have been told to keep a reserve. This basically constitutes our natural gas policy," agreed Gagilas.
But if the reaction in Lithuania to the disruption was mild, Poland was visibly indignant at having its gas supplies cut off in the dead of winter. Prime Minister Leszek Miller said the disruption placed doubt on "the credibility of the Russian suppliers, not only in Poland but in all Western Europe," the Agence France Presse news agency reported.
Russian President Vladimir Putin was quoted as saying in a telephone call to Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski that the cut-off had been an "unfortunate incident," and Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov called Miller to assure him that "neither in 10 days, nor ever will such a situation be repeated."
