Poland and the Baltic countries inaugurated on Thursday a new pipeline intended to integrate the markets in this northeastern region of the European Union and thus reduce dependency on Russiain the context of russian invasion in ukraine.
The GIPL (Gas Interconnection Poland-Lithuania, ndlr) pipeline, 508 km long, of which 165 km in Lithuania and 343 km in Poland, will be able to transport in both directions some 2,000 million cubic meters of gas and, thanks to networks existing gas plants, also communicate with latvia, Estonia Y Finland.
At the end of April, the Russian giant Gazprom suspended all gas supplies to Poland Y Bulgariawielding the threat of a shortage in Central and Eastern Europe, but also in the entire European continent.
“Today we consecrate our energy independence,” Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda congratulated, at an official ceremony organized in Jauniunai, near Vilnius, which brought together senior officials from Poland and the Baltic countries.
“We will strengthen our resistance to political pressure,” he insisted.
This gas pipeline “is a response to the energy blackmail” exerted by Russia on Europe, Polish President Andrzej Duda insisted.
According to Eurostat, in 2020 93% of Estonian imports of natural gas100% of Latvian imports and 41.8% of Lithuanian imports came from Russia.
For Lithuania, the opening of the gas pipeline represents a second source of gas supply independent of Russia, since the country has had a gas terminal since 2014. liquefied natural gas.
The three Baltic countries, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, announced in early April that they had stopped importing gas in Russiancounting at this time on its stored gas reserves.
Poland, which uses up to 21 billion cubic meters of gas per year, declared itself “ready to face even a total cutoff” of Russian gas supplies.
The GIPL gas pipeline, whose cost was 500 million euros, a large part of which was covered by the European Unionensures one of the alternative gas sources for Poland.