Almost 900 gigawatt-hours of gas moved through Balticconnector in January

A total of 885 gigawatt-hours of gas moved in January through Balticconnector, the Estonian-Finnish gas connection launched at the beginning of the year.

During the whole month the gas moved through Balticconnector from Estonia to Finland, using up the entire allocated market transfer capacity.

“The launch of Balticconnector is a vivid illustration of the effectiveness of the common Estonian-Latvian-Finnish gas market. While many had doubted the need for the pipeline during its construction, January clearly demonstrated the market demand for this connection, with the gas from the underground storage facility in Latvia being transferred to Finland in the winter period,” commented Taavi Veskimägi, Chairman of the Management Board of Elering.

The gas that was moved to Finland through Baltcconnector covered more than one third of the total gas consumption volume of that country. The rest of the gas consumed by Finland entered the country from Russia via Imatra. According to the Finnish system administrator, that source accounted for 1687 gigawatt-hours of gas in January.

The gas volume transferred to our northern neighbour through Balticconnector last month actually exceeded the total gas consumption in Estonia. In January 565 gigawatt-hours of gas reached the local distribution nodes in Estonia from the gas connection network managed by Elering. Approximately five gigawatt-hours of gas was manufactured by the enterprises connected to those distribution nodes in the course of last month.

Balticconnector is an international gas connection built on the initiative of the Estonian and Finnish gas system administrators. The total cost of the Balticconnector cluster is about 300 million euros. The European Union has pledged over 200 million euros to this project.