TALLINN, October 25 (RIA Novosti) - Polish and Baltic lawmakers have met in Estonia to discuss what it takes to go off Russia’s power grid and start generating their own electricity, the head of Estonia’s EU Affairs Committee said Saturday.
“Baltic electrical grids are already being cut off from Russia,” said Kalle Palling, the chairman of the EU Affairs Committee at the Estonian parliament.
“In August, we filed a petition with the European Commission asking it to fund the third electrical interconnection between Estonia and Latvia, which is to be built by 2020. And then we will need to build three electrical interconnections between Lithuania and Poland,” Palling said.
Chiefs of EU affairs committees from Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia met in the Estonian city of Narva to discuss the outlook for a single gas market. Palling cited a new LNG storage and regasification unit terminal as a positive example of such cooperation. The floating LNG terminal is to be opened Monday in the Lithuanian port of Klaipeda on the Baltic Sea.
The Baltic three and Poland believe the Klaipeda gas terminal could help them reduce dependence on Russia’s energy giant Gazprom and boost energy security. Earlier reports said the gas hub would become operational in early December. Its capacity is estimated at 2-3 billion cubic meters of natural gas a year.
