Vija Pakalkaite's paper is out via the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies (OIES)

Vija's stay at OIES was financed by CEU via the Doctoral Research Support Grant (DSRG) grant. In Oxford, she spent three months this spring, and with the guidance of the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies senior researchers, she has written a paper based on the data she had collected before.

This included going to the Lithuanian Parliament archives, the interviews with the former Prime Minister of Lithuania Andrius Kubilius, former Energy Minister Arvydas Sekmokas, the current Energy Minister Rokas Masiulis, the former Director-General for Energy at the European Commission Philip Lowe and more.

The paper analyses the Lithuanian gas market, where, after decades of dependence on a single natural gas supplier (Russia), the Lithuanian state reformed it in just a few years. This was the second case in the EU gas sector, in which the European Commission participated in what were usually bilateral negotiations between a state entity and foreign energy companies. This reform also established a ‘precedent’ in the implementation of an ownership unbundling option that was envisaged in the Third Energy Package in a country where the Russian gas exporter, Gazprom, had an ownership interest in transmission.

Congratulations, Vija!