It is becoming trendy to doubt the Pan Baltic and Polish new nuclear power station project in Lithuania.  The latest who is doubting the success of the joint venture is Mr Viktos Shevaldin, the CEO of the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant.  ‘It is nice to drink vodka or play cards in the company of four.  Theoretically it is also possible to build a nuclear plant; create a company and around the table make a deal.  However, if everything will develop according to the principle of the Krilov’s fairytale ‘A Swan, a Crayfish and a Pike’ then forget it, it is not even worth to start’ the CEO said to the Verslo Zinios paper.

Nevertheless, Mr Shevaldin has a different idea.  He thinks that a more realistic plan could be to bring in a large financial group into the project.  In such scenario Lithuania should hold a 51 percent stake in the new facility and the rest would be held by a private partner. “The more partners there are, the more interests, disagreements they have; they can simply ruin the project. It is much simpler when there is a certain company, the future-to-be owner. It accepts all the responsibility for implementation deadlines, quality, funding and operation,” said Shevaldin.

Mr Shevaldin doubted the model of the project; “At the moment we have a rather complex model, and I am somewhat disappointed that Lithuania is trying to do this in partnership with another three countries,” he said to Verslo zinios.

On Friday, Lithuania’s political heavy weight Mr Brazauskas doubted if Lithuanian could build the plant all together and suggested to join the Russian Nuclear plant project which is suppose to be built in Kaliningrad.  Mr Brazauskas is absolutely curtain that the Russians will build the plant and that it would be beneficial for Lithuania to ‘show an initiative’ and join in.

“They proposed officially. Lithuania has to participate with its own capital, it has to build a network, one or two powerful electricity lines,” Brazauskas said, explaining Russia’s proposal in detail.

Vilniaus Diena in its editorial has expressed astonishment with this initiative ‘It would not be strange if a representative from the Kaliningrad plant or a lawyer hired by the plant would behave like that.  But in this occasion we are talking about a one of the most influential political figures in Lithuania, therefore this zeal demonstrated by Brazauskas is bizarre, to say the least.’  The paper criticised the former first secretary of the Communist party and said that he should take a blame for the present state of the Lithuania energy market which is also called ‘an energy island’ in the EU.

On his interview to TV3 Brazauskas elaborated ‘I am only surprised by attitude shown by the Energy Minister Arvydas Sekmokas. He does not grasp the energy issues. He keeps saying that we will purchase electricity from various sources via tenders from January 1. The main question is from what sources? We have no power links with the Swedes, the Finns or the Poles. There is just one source – Russia. I have advised to Grybauskaite to propose to Sekmokas to go to Moscow and bring back a contract on the purchase of electricity.’