Baltic, Energy, Estonia, Gas

"LNG consumption will continue to grow. That's very likely," Aivar Tihane, the Estonian company's head of gas sales, said in a news conference for Lithuanian, Latvian and Polish reporters in Tallinn.

Tihane would not disclose whether Eesti Energia had concluded any LNG purchase contracts, but he said that the company was looking to buy LNG via the Klaipeda terminal and store it at Latvia's Incukalns gas storage facility.

The head of gas sales said that Gazprom's pricing policy, which he described as "the square root of the customer's friendliness", was among the reasons for the LNG market expansion.

In his words, the formula under which the Russian giant sells gas is very complex and makes prices almost unpredictable.

After Gazprom's discount of about 20 percent on gas supplies to Lithuania, which was given in 2014, ends, Eesti Energia's subsidiary Enefit plans to sell gas in Lithuania.

According to Tihane, Enefit will initially hold less than 10 percent of the market, but it plans to expand after a common Baltic gas market starts functioning in 2020.