Baltic States – CIS, Belarus, Energy, Energy Market, Lithuania, Russia

The majority of power supplied by Inter RAO Lietuva was used for the loading of the Kruonis Pumped Storage Hydroelectric Power Plant, the pumping of water into the upper basin, the company said.

"Following information on the upcoming launch of power production at the Astravyets NPP, we made preparations for that and took measures in advance, therefore power is no longer purchases from Inter RAO Lietuva as of November 1," Rimgaudas Kalvaitis, CEO at Ignitis Gamyba, said in a statement.

The contract with Inter RAO Lietuva stated that it is terminated once power production at the Astravyets NPP is started, and once it is terminated, Ignitis Gamyba will satisfy its electricity needs on the NordPool exchange, the company said.

Juozas Ruzgys, a spokesman for Inter RAO Lietuva, told the company is no longer importing Belarusian electricity this year, and has been importing very small amounts of its in recent years as it's now importing electricity from the Kaliningrad region.

Earlier in the day, Lithuania's power transmission system operator Litgrid announced that Belarus had launched power production at the Astravyets NPP. Soon afterwards Lithuanian suspended power trading with Belarus but the physical power flow continues.

A spokesman for Litgrid acknowledged that power from Astravyets would physically continue flowing into "deficit" Baltic states.

"Technically, it’s very natural as the Balti states are deficit countries and once a major source of generation emerged near our border, in fact physically – I will stress, physically, not commercially, – power will flow into deficit zones," Giedrius Radvila, director of Litgrid's Power System Operations Department, told journalists on Tuesday.