You're reading: Lithuanian PM not confirming rumors Gazprom obstructing shale gas production in country

Vilnius, February 7 (Interfax/BNS) - Gazprom is not putting pressure on the Lithuanian authorities in matters involving the production of shale gas in the country, Prime Minister Algirdas Butkevicius said.

“I definitely do not feel any kind of pressure from representatives working at Gazprom. In the government cabinet I have not encountered the view that Gazprom is suggesting such research not be done,” Butkevicius said during a Thursday interview with Radio Novosti.

The prime minister said he has “not noticed any such concerns” at other governmental agencies.

Opposition conservatives have been saying that Gazprom is against prospecting for and producing shale gas in Lithuania. According to opposition leader and former Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius, “shale presents a threat not to nature, not to people, but to the Russian monopoly.”

Social democrat Butkevicius does not agree. He said, “Conservatives have for a long time already been saying that if something in the Lithuanian energy sector is not realized, then Gazprom is to blame.”

The prime minister thinks rushed the Wednesday decision by the Environmental Protection Committee to halt a project involving prospecting for shale gas. He said that there so far is no detailed information on the effect shale gas production has on the environment.

Butkevicius thinks that Lithuania “should know what subsurface resources it has.” He confirms that the question of shale gas will be addressed at a meeting of the political committee of the ruling coalition.

The Baltic News Service reports that this spring the government will need to decide whether Chevron will be prospecting for so-called ‘clay shales’ at the Shilutsko-Taurage section in western Lithuania.

Lithuanian scientists reckon that Lithuania may possess from 30 to 50 billion cubic meters (bcm) of shale gas that can be extracted. The country purchased more than three bcm of gas from Gazprom last year.