The court cancelled the March 8 decision of Klaipėda Regional Court on interim safeguard measures, which were requested by a consortium of Kauno Dujotiekio Statyba (Kaunas Pipeline Construction) and Šiaulių Dujotiekio Statyba (Šiauliai Pipeline Construction), one of the bidders in the tender issued by Klaipėdos Nafta (Klaipėda Oil). The Court of Appeals came to the conclusion that the application of interim safeguard measures in this case would do more harm than their non-application.
Indrė Milinienė, a spokeswoman for Klaipėdos Nafta, the developer of the LNG facility, told BNS that the tender commission would soon declare the winner, Germany’s PPS Pipeline Systems, and the contract would be signed 15 days later, unless the results of the tender were contested during that period.
Klaipėdos Nafta told the court that the suspension of the tender for an undefined period of time would put on hold the implementation of a 2.4-billion-litas (EUR 695.65m) project of national importance, and the waste of time of the terminal would cost around 500,000 litas per day.
Rokas Masiulis, Klaipėdos Nafta CEO, hopes that the company will soon be able to sign the contract and the works will be carried out in due time, i.e. by August 2014.
“I think we will manage to do that in due time. The sooner the tender procedures are resumed, the sooner the works will be done and the entire project will be implemented in time. Let’s hope that this obstacle will be removed,” he told BNS.
PPS Pipeline Systems, the winner of the tender, has offered to build the pipeline for 95 million litas (EUR 27.53m), excluding VAT.
The LNG terminal project shall be completed by December 2014.
