Correction: New era of diversified supply in Lithuania as LNG arrives

This story has been updated with the correct vessel capacity.

The 155,000 cubic metre (cbm) Arctic Aurora LNG vessel arrived on schedule into Lithuania’s port of Klaipeda on Tuesday early afternoon, heralding the first supply of commercial natural gas in the region that is not sourced from Russia.

The LNG, delivered by Norway’s Statoil and sourced from its Hammerfest field, arrived at the Klaipedos Nafta-operated terminal at 12:31 Vilnius time, port data showed.

Data from the Lithuanian transmission system operator Amber Grid showed the terminal was flowing gas into the national network at a rate of 74cbm/hour on Tuesday morning.

Prior to the arrival of the Arctic Aurora, the LNG terminal – a floating storage regasification unit – had only received commissioning volume. A single cargo, also sourced from Statoil, arrived at the end of October.

Lithuania, along with Baltic neighbour states Latvia and Estonia, until Tuesday were entirely dependent on Russia’s Gazprom for all their gas supply.

Access to a new source of supply has allowed incumbent suppliers across all three Baltic countries to renegotiate lower their long-term contracts with the Russian major.

All the volume delivered into Klaipeda is sourced via procurement firm LITGAS, part of state-run Lietuvos Energija, which also owns gas incumbent Lietuvos Dujos.

The LNG contract between Statoil and LITGAS is indexed to the British NBP hub. Tom Marzec-Manser