OREANDA-NEWS. February 19, 2009. Belarus, Latvia and Lithuania plan to propose a joint energy project to the EU, Prime Minister of Belarus Sergey Sidorsky said after his meeting with Prime Minister of Latvia Ivar Godmanis.

“In the near future we will develop a joint Belarus-Lithuania-Latvia project in the energy area and offer it to the EU”, Sergey Sidorsky said.

He added that Belarus is carrying out a programme to modernize its power engineering industry and increase its capacity. The future nuclear power plant will allow to export Belarusian electric power which explains the interest of the country in participation in energy projects.

Latvian Prime Minister Ivars Godmanis informed that a tripartite meeting is to be held in Vilnius on March 9 to discuss the construction of power lines to Latvia. He said that a project to set up power lines from Sweden is in preparation now. It is unclear yet whether they will go to Lithuania or Latvia. The European Commission will deliver its resolution in mid summer so that the construction can be launched on January 1, 2010.

At the same time, the sides are considering a possibility to interconnect power lines to expand the energy supplies market. “We are interested in connecting these lines with Belarusian ones, as we get all the electric power through Lithuania,” the Prime Minister said. He pointed out that it is necessary to extend this project beyond the EU as Latvia gets electric power from Russia as well. After all, Belarus decided to construct a nuclear power plant and Latvia can import electric power from Belarus, too.

The Prime Ministers of the two countries signed a memorandum on energy cooperation between the government of the Republic of Belarus and the government of the Republic of Latvia.