Rokas Masiulis has also assured that the company would cooperate with the Public Procurement Office, which will look into the transparency of the procedures.
“We will cooperate with the Public Procurement Office and provide all information required. We are certain that we are right. We are sorry that the bidder, who was defeated in a fair competition due to a higher price, is now using legislative gaps and is looking for ways to strengthen its positions. I hope that the Public Procurement Office will probe the tender as soon as possible and it will not affect the implementation of the project,” Masiulis told BNS.
“The tender was transparent and it was organized in such as way so as to bring in the maximum benefit for the state,” he pointed out.
He confirmed that the office notified the company on Tuesday that it had put the signing of the contract with the winning bidder on hold.
The office decided to stop the contract award procedure after receiving a complaint from Germany’s PPS Pipeline Systems. PPS Pipeline Systems, which submitted a bid in the pipeline tender, said last week that it suspected that the tender had breached the Public Procurement Law. Another German company, Friedrich Vorwerk, has also complained to the Public Procurement Office over the results of the tender, although it did not take part in it officially.
Both German companies claim that Klaipėdos Nafta modified the assessment criteria during the last stage of the tender, removing the criterion of work completion dates and leaving the lowest price as the only criterion for assessing the bids.
“Initially we wanted the contractor to begin and complete the works as soon as possible... However, we found out in the process of the tender that the deepening of the port at Kiaulės Nugara (Pig's Back) [an island identified as the most suitable location for the LNG terminal] could be completed by July 1, 2013, at the earliest. Therefore there was no sense in asking for the works to be completed earlier, in August 2014,” Masiulis explained to BNS.
Both bidders eventually offered to complete the works on October 1, 2014, he added.
PPS Pipeline Systems offered to build the link for 192.182 million litas (EUR 55.7m), including VAT. The consortium of Lithuanian companies, Kauno Dujotiekio Statyba (Kaunas Pipeline Construction) and Šiaulių Dujotiekio Statyba (Šiauliai Pipeline Construction), which bid 166.979 million litas, including VAT, has been named the winner of the tender.
Lithuania expects to build the terminal in Klaipėda by the end of 2014 to obtain a cheaper alternative to Gazprom-supplied Russian gas, which is widely used for heating.
