OREANDA-NEWS. The oil refining company ORLEN Lietuva and oil product terminal Klaipedos Nafta have signed letter of intent regarding potential cooperation in evaluating ORLEN Lietuva's future product pipeline to the seaside.

For ORLEN Lietuva, the largest company in Lithuania and export leader, the new product pipeline is crucial to preserve competitiveness of Lithuanian petroleum products on the global markets and create grounds for long-term business operations of the Company. It is therefore fundamental for securing energy independence of the region in terms of petroleum supplies. Moreover, the pipeline transportation of crude oil and petroleum product is the best way from the economical and efficiency standpoint, as well as from the environmental point of view.

The Company considers Klaipedos Nafta's terminal as one of directions and started consultations regarding cooperation in creating the pipeline connection between the Juodeikiai-based Refinery and Klaipedos Nafta terminal infrastructure.

“The project of the product pipeline to a seaside terminal will be beneficial to both ORLEN Lietuva and the whole Lithuanian petroleum product market. We estimate that such investment will not only facilitate economical reasons of our business operations but at the same time will generate the increase of the refinery annual throughput capacity by more than 10 percent, up to 11 million tons. As a result, ORLEN Lietuva could even reinforce its strong position on the market,” said Ireneusz Fafara, General Director of ORLEN Lietuva.

Based on the provisions of the Law on Energy, the product pipeline is the facility of the national significance; therefore, ORLEN Lietuva has proposed to include the product pipeline into the new action plan for implementation of the National Energy Independence Strategy for 2012-2016. ORLEN Lietuva is referred to as the company significant for ensuring the national security in the Law of the Republic of Lithuania on Enterprises and Facilities of Strategic Importance to National Security and Other Enterprises Important to Ensuring National Security.

ORLEN Lietuva has invested almost USD 1 billion into the modernization projects since 2006. In 2012, ORLEN Lietuva's tax contributions accounted for nine percent of the national budget tax income. In 2006-2012, ORLEN Lietuva's tax contributions to the national budget, including the social insurance tax, amounted to LTL 10.66 billion.