Brussels, 15/10/2015 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 15 October in Brussels, the heads of state of the governments of Poland and three Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) signed an agreement that will allow for a gas interconnector to be built between Poland and Lithuania (GIPL) by 2019. The aim of this deal is to put an end to the protracted isolation of countries neighbouring the Baltic Sea in obtaining gas supplies.
The agreement signed on Thursday was witnessed by President Jean-Claude Juncker, together with the Prime Minister of Poland, Ewa Kopacz, the President of Lithuania, Dalia Grybauskaité, the Prime Minister of Latvia, Laimdota Straujuma and the Prime Minister of Estonia, Taavi Rõivas.
Juncker stated that the signing of the agreement “is about European solidarity…we have done much more than bringing the energy isolation of the Baltic States to an end. We have brought the region further together. Today we have agreed on European infrastructure that will unite us, instead of dividing us.”
The GIPL will help integrate the gas networks of countries in the Baltic Sea region into the EU internal gas market. The success of the project depends on close regional cooperation facilitated by the Commission as part of the Baltic Energy Market Interconnection Plan (BEMIP).
This will be the first pipeline connecting Poland and Lithuania and will be the first gas interconnector between the eastern part of the Baltic Sea region and mainland Europe. It will cover a radius of 534 km, including 357 km in Poland and 177 km in Lithuania. Its initial capacity will be 2.4 billion m³ a year from Poland to Lithuania and 1 billion m³ a year from Lithuania to Poland
The total cost of the construction of the project will be €558 million. In 2014, the GIPL had the status of a Project of Common Interest (PCI) and obtained co-financing under the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) in the form of subsidies (around €10 million) for studies and around €295 million for the work undertaken.
The national authorities of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, as well as the Commission and project promoters (the Lithuanian gas transmission system operator Amber Grid and its Polish equivalent, Gaz-System) concluded an agreement on the financial structure of the project last September.
The GIPL is expected to provide socio-economic benefits to the three Baltic countries, as well as Finland, when the gas interconnector between Finland and Estonia, the BalticConnector, is built. This will put an end to the isolation of these countries at a level of gas supplies and enable them to diversify the sources and routes for gas supplies, as well as help strengthen these supplies. (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)