According to the European Commission, the LNG strategy's goal is to build and develop infrastructure that will help provide eastern EU members with LNG supplies. Another purpose of the strategy is to maintain a rational use of gas storage facilities.
However, LNG deliveries may finally cost much more than Russian gas supplies as far as European customers are concerned, Kommersant warned.
According to the newspaper, the current level of loading European terminals with LNG stands at about 30 percent, which leads to a loss of investment, a problem that was not mentioned in the EU's LNG strategy.
It seems that the European gas regulators prefer to focus more on reducing the difference between summer and winter gas prices, which prevents investors from injecting money into new underground gas storage facilities, Kommersant said.
The strategy only notes that the cost of LNG will decrease in the coming years, which will allegedly lead to a "growth in European LNG imports", the newspaper said.
In this context, Kommersant quoted business analyst Vitaly Kryukov as saying that the European Commission sees LNG as a universal tool for solving the main task of giving eastern EU countries an alternative to the Russian gas giant Gazprom.
"The strategy, however, fails to assess the economic feasibility of the LNG on the Eastern European market," Kommersant quoted Kryukov as saying.
Kryukov said that the terminal gave Lithuania the opportunity to get a discount from Gazprom, but "the question is what to do with it now."
The EU's draft strategy on LNG and gas storage is due to be published officially on February 10.
