Amendments to the energy bill adopted in final reading, on 13 March in Riga, schedule the unbundling of Latvijas Gaze, the company with a monopoly on the purchase, storage, transport, distribution and sale of gas in Lithuania for no later than 3 April 2017.
The amendments state that the process can be speeded up if one of the following conditions is fulfilled in the meantime: the direct hook-up of Latvia's gas distribution system to that of an EU member state…
Russian obstacles
The unbundling of Baltic gas operators, required by the EU, is complicated by the presence of the same major shareholder in each of the three companies, namely Russia's Gazprom, which is trying to push back the deadline. The Russian group owns 34% of Latvijas Gaze and can rely on the support of the Latvian subsidiary of another Russian firm, Itera (16%). In Estonia, it owns 37% of Eesti Gaas (and Itera 10%). In Lithuania, it has a 37.1% holding in Lietuvos Dujos. In all three cases, Germany's E.ON is the other major shareholder.
When Lithuania made a move to transfer gas transport activities from Lietuvos Dujos to another company (Amber Grid) by November 2014, Gazprom brought the matter before an international court of arbitration. In February, though, it seemed to have accepted this inevitability (see Europolitics of 12 February 2014).
In Estonia, since parliament's June 2012 vote in favour of the principle of unbundling by 1 January 2015, the Russian group has been working in the wings to have Eesti Gas put obstacles in its way.
In Latvia, Gazprom has tried to influence the legislative process. Now that parliament has voted, its future tactic is not yet clear. In today's political context, there is a good chance that it will not tend to be very accommodating.