Production of liquid natural gas (LNG) from the Shtokman field is planned to start in 2013. This gas could be exported to Lithuania, says Valery Golubev, Deputy Chairman of Board of Directors in Gazprom, according toRosBusinessConsulting.
The first phase of project suggests a production of 23.7 billion cubic meters of gas per year. Five percent will be sent to the local market in Murmansk Oblast. 50 percent of the rest will be delivered through a gas pipeline while 50 percent will be turned into LNG.
Increasing reliance on Russian gas
In December Lithuania will shut down its Soviet-era reactor in Ignalina, which practically overnight will transform the Baltic state of 3.4 million people from a net energy exporter to an energy importer, Forbes.com writes.
Since the country has no direct link to the European electricity grid, it has no choice but to import more energy from Russia.
This week Gazprom opened a new pipeline across Lithuania that will allow the Russian gas company to increase supplies to Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave between Lithuania and Poland. It will also allow Gazprom to boost natural gas supplies to Lithuania.
Many Lithuanians are apprehensive about the increasing reliance on Russian gas that the new pipeline signifies. Moscow's snap decisions in the past to cut off supplies to Ukraine and Belarus, make many Lithuanians fear that Russia is an unreliable energy supplier.
"Vilnius should not forget that the Kremlin is using Gazprom not only as economic, but also a very efficient political tool," said Raimundas Lopata, director of the International Relations and Political Science Institute in Vilnius.
Gazprom said it expects to make the first shipments of gas in the new pipeline in December.