Five countries to sign in Vilnius agreements on alternative oil pipeline

Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Georgia plan to sign an agreement on joint work to implement an Odessa-Brody-Plock-Gdansk oil pipeline project in Vilnius during the Vilnius Energy Security Conference on Oct. 10-11.  The Pipeline should would provide an alternative to Russian oil supplies for the countries concerned. As Neringa Pazusiene, a department director at the Lithuanian Economy Ministry, told BNS “This will be the last step to be taken in order to get the project started. The ministerial meeting in Tbilisi served as a catalyst for reaching agreement,” she said.

Sarmatia was founded by Poland’s PERN and Ukraine’s Ukrtransnafta.

As the BNS writes Sarmatia’s shareholders gave the go-ahead for increasing the company’s authorized share capital to 12 million zlotys (3.2 mln) from 2 million zlotys to bring in Azerbaijan’s Socar, Georgia’s GOGC and Lithuania’s Klaipedos Nafta (Klaipeda Oil) in the mid of July of 2007.

The state-run oil product terminal operator, Klaipedos Nafta, expects to have 1 percent of the shares in Sarmatia.The Odessa-Brody-Plock-Gdansk pipeline is planned to be the first oil pipeline to link the Caspian and Black Sea regions to the.

Baltic Sea region and to become a new oil transit route to Europe.