Lithuania’s politicians have nearly six months to intervene as the third party in the dispute between Estonia’s and Latvia’s commercial energy companies and system operators. Otherwise the price of electricity in the Lithuanian bidding area of Nord Pool Spot exchange might increase for all users starting from 2014, as Latvia’s electricity system operator Augstsprieguma Tikis seeks to further limit the commercial function of limited-capacity electricity interconnections between Latvia and Estonia.
Lithuania’s politicians seem to be in no haste to add the Latvian-Estonian interconnection bottleneck problem to their agenda. Meanwhile, the tension between Estonia’s and Latvia’s electricity transmission system operators is growing further.
However, Inter RAO Lietuva, Lithuania’s largest electricity supplier controlled by Russia’s energy giant Inter RAO, does not seem to be much concerned about the bottleneck problem between Estonia and Latvia since it buys the bulk of Russian electricity from a gas-fired power plant in the Kaliningrad region. Moreover, the capacity of the lines connecting Lithuania with the Kaliningrad region and Belarus “is more than sufficient”.
