Lithuania Seeks Freedom From Russia’s Oil-Pipeline `Friendship’

Among the pine forests of north- eastern Lithuania, a dried-up oil pipeline called Druzhba — Russian for friendship — has become a symbol for the increasingly hollow relations between the Baltic states and Russia.

A year ago, a reported leak on Russian territory blocked the flow of oil into AB Mazeikiu Nafta, the only refinery in the three former Soviet republics. While deliveries have stopped before at politically tense moments, this time the refinery didn’t wait for the leak to be fixed. It now pays more to buy oil off tankers from Russia — and from as far away as Venezuela.
Weaned from the pipeline, the last vestige of a communist centralized system that once provided life-support, Lithuania is exploring other ways to reduce its dependence on the world’s largest energy supplier. The new liberation is a sequel to the political independence it won 16 years ago.

“It is a very dramatic breakthrough for Lithuanian society,” says Laimonas Talat-Kelpsa, an undersecretary at the ministry of foreign affairs in Vilnius.

Like its Baltic neighbors, this nation of 3.4 million people has fretted about the energy network that ties it to Russia.

“We are talking about a pipeline that was part of the USSR,” says Valery Nesterov, an analyst at Troika Dialog, a Moscow brokerage. “Since then, big changes have happened. An empire fell apart, economic relations have been disrupted and new ties have not yet stabilized.”

One cause for concern has been Russia’s use of its pipelines as a tool to wield power over smaller neighbors.

Bloomberg