“We are happy with our cooperation with Van Oord, which has mobilized the equipment that is powerful enough. These works have made a big advance with more than 500,000 cubic meters, or between 30 and 40 percent, excavated already,” he said at a news conference in Klaipėda on Tuesday.
With dredging, the seabed of the port would be adapted for the Floating Storage Regasification Unit (FSRU), he said. The works, which were scheduled to begin last November, were actually launched in February and would be finished by mid-June or even earlier.
The 87.807-million-litas (EUR 25.45m) contract with Van Oord, which is very important for Lithuania’s LNG facility project, was signed in late January. The Dutch company will have to deepen a certain area of the port's waters to 14.5 meters, and to 16 meters at the Pig's Back, where the LNG terminal will be located.
The jetty for the LNG facility will be built by Latvia’s BMGS under a 93.88-million-litas contract (excluding VAT). The Latvian company planned to launch works in September and complete the project on August 10, 2014 (the contract will expire on October 1, 2014), Indre Milinienė, a spokeswoman for Klaipėdos Nafta, told BNS.
However, it is still unclear who will build a gas pipeline that will link the LNG terminal with Lithuania’s grid. The results of a respective tender, which saw Germany’s PPS Pipeline Systems and a consortium of Kauno Dujotiekių Statyba (Kaunas Pipeline Construction) and Šiaulių Dujotiekių Statyba (Šiauliai Pipeline Construction) vie for the contract, have been challenged in court.
