Lithuania Expects First Commercial LNG Cargo at end-Dec

Norway's Statoil (STO) is expected to ship the first commercial cargo of liquefied natural gas (LNGLF) to Lithuania by the end of December, the import terminal's operator said on Tuesday.

Lithuania plans to cover about a fifth of its annual gas needs in 2015 through imports of super-cooled gas delivered by tankers to cut its dependence on pipeline gas imports from Russia.

"We expect the (LNG) cargo to arrive on Dec. 22 or Dec. 23," a spokeswoman for Klaipedos Nafta (XIC.F), the operator of Lithuania's newly launched LNG import terminal, said.

The first cargo is expected to be 140,000 cubic metres of LNG or 84 million cubic metres of natural gas.

Litgas, a gas trading arm of Lithuania's state-owned energy group Lietuvos Energija, has signed a five-year deal to buy 0.5 billion cubic metres of natural gas from Statoil.

That's about 0.8 million cubic metres of LNG, equal to 6 standard cargoes.

Statoil is scheduled to deliver the other LNG cargoes to Lithuania in February, April, June, July and September, the terminal's loadings plan shows.

Reporting by Andrius Sytas and Nerijus Adomaitis