Gazprom has resumed transit through Lithuania

Deliveries of Russian pipeline gas through Lithuania have resumed. Prior to that, the Marshal Vasilevsky terminal could supply regasified LNG to the Kaliningrad Region system, which was under US sanctions.

On August 4, Russian gas supplies through Lithuania recovered. These data are published by the platform of GTS operators of EU countries ENTSOG. So, on August 4, deliveries amounted to 3.6 million cubic meters. And before that, the transit was idle for 9 days.

Data on the resumption of deliveries show both the exit point from the territory of Lithuania and the entry point from Belarus.

The transit stop was the fourth in a year. The previous ones took place in February, April and May-June. The April stop turned out to be the longest, as it lasted 16 days.

Judging by the AIS data of the vessels, the supply stops are due to the fact that Marshal Vasilevsky was unloading and picking up the following gas shipments from the Portovaya Baltic complex, which belongs to Gazprom. And he did it both directly and through the project's gas carriers, which, like himself, fell under US sanctions.

As EADaily reported, at the end of July, the transit of Russian gas through Lithuania stopped again. Apparently, the floating LNG terminal is again dumping regasified fuel into a storage facility in the Kaliningrad region. Because of the sanctions, the Baltic Portovaya complex has almost stopped working and it needs to put LNG somewhere.

As a result, only the Kaliningrad terminal, in fact, provided the work of the "Port" since February. It is quite possible that after the delivery of gas to the gas transportation system of the Kaliningrad region and pumping it into storage facilities, Marshal Vasilevsky will go to Portovaya for a new batch. However, the ship's transponder is disabled and its location is still unknown.

It is known that one batch of LNG can be up to 100 million cubic meters. The Baltic medium-tonnage LNG complex "Portovaya" with a capacity of 1.5 million tons was launched in September 2022, and initially the cargoes were delivered to Greece and Turkey. Last year, a significant part of the parties went to China and there was a direction to Spain.

Sanctions against gas carriers and the Portovaya and Cryogaz Vysotsk projects have become an unpleasant surprise for Gazprom and Novatek, but will not seriously affect the overall export of Russian LNG. The total design capacity of the two sanctioned complexes is 2.2 million tons (3 billion cubic meters). This is about 6-7% of Russian LNG exports.

At the same time, by the end of the year, the contract between Gazprom and the Lithuanian operator Amber Grid for gas transit to the Kaliningrad region is coming to an end and nothing has been reported about its extension so far. Alexey Grivach, Deputy Director of FNEB, told EADaily that the continuation of transit is a basic scenario, since it is beneficial to all parties, and LNG supplies are an alternative — in case of failures.