As ordered by the Public Procurement Office, Klaipėdos Nafta sent invitations on Monday to the bidders - a consortium of Kauno Dujotiekio Statyba (Kaunas Pipeline Construction) and Šiaulių Dujotiekio Statyba (Šiauliai Pipeline Construction), and Germany's PPS Pipeline Systems - to submit their final offers, the state-run company said in a statement published on the NASDAQ OMX Vilnius website.
The offers will be evaluated based on the most economically advantageous tender criterion, the developer of the LNG project said.
The Public Procurement Office said earlier this month that Klaipėdos Nafta violated the tender procedures when it replaced the criterion of the most economically advantageous tender with that of the lowest price. It ordered the company to return to the status quo of November 28, when the criteria were 80 percent for the price and 20 percent for the work completion date. The work was to be completed by August 2014.
In their initial offers submitted on October 15, 2012, PPS Pipeline Systems offered to build the link for 210.811 million litas (EUR 61.1m), and the Lithuanian consortium, for 220.877 million litas.
On November 28, Klaipėdos Nafta invited the consortium and the German company to submit their final offers. It modified the evaluation criteria on December 3.
On December 20, the consortium of Lithuanian companies was named the wining bidder with a 166.979-million-litas offer, including VAT, and the German company was the runner-up with 192.182 million litas.
The contractor will have two years to design and build a pipeline of almost 20 kilometers in length from the LNG terminal's quay to Lietuvos Dujos' (Lithuanian Gas) distribution station. It will also have to install gas equipment, a gas metering station, telecommunications and other systems on the quay. The pipeline is a key component of the LNG terminal project's infrastructure.
Lithuania expects to build the terminal in Klaipėda by the end of 2014 to obtain a cheaper alternative to Gazprom-supplied Russian gas.
