Lithuania has Independence, not Latvia. Kremlin troll factory was screaming about money waste for years. Today it looks like a smart investment without a doubt.

Even with the terminal, Lithuania still has a 40% Russian gas dependence [0], barely 10% lower than Germany, while Latvia is over 90% dependent on Russian gas.

The matter of fact is that only very few countries in Europe can "afford" to get by without Russian gas or other resources. After all it is the home to the continents largest concentration of natural resources.

There is only so much global production capacity, so much bandwith in terms of logistics, that can compensate for that. It's not like we can suddenly tap a new continent full of resources to replace Russia, reality ain't working like that.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1201743/russian-gas-depe...

All three Baltic countries stopped all imports of Russian gas for its own use this week, a move largely enabled by the FSRU Independence. The only remaining movement of gas across the pipeline through Lithuania from Russia is in transit to the Kaliningrad oblast.

FSRU Independence has sufficient capacity to deliver enough gas to serve 70~100% of the yearly needs of the three Baltic countries, depending on how you count. Of course it remains a question of who supplies the LNG, but it gives the countries a backup, an ability to pick the suppliers and an ability to make politically important decisions, even if it means paying a little more.

Oh you are right. Sorry about that. Even my source correctly says Lithuania. Need to learn to read.

Resilience is inherently wasteful.

Spain has. But youll need pipes.

There exists LNG terminals in Holland, Belgium and Poland: Rotterdam, Zeebrugge, Swinoujscie etc.

They are connected to German pipelines.

This map is excellent: https://www.gie.eu/publications/maps/gie-lng-map/

I know, but I've been told that Spain has the most underused installed capacity.

Does Spain export a lot of electricity? It could produce a lot of solar power. Even some in the winter, a lot in the summer when it's needed for air conditioning. One can think of it this way, if a solar panel is manufactured in or imported to EU, maybe it should be installed in the more sunny regions for maximum benefit.

Spain is also a wind power giant.

As comparison, Germany is not a great location for either wind or solar power.

I heard that France refused several projects to connect the iberian system to central europe properly, not only electricity but also gas.

It isn't that spanish companies can get much help from the government's diplomacy (long topic), so someone else interested in that connection would have to partner with such companies, or a foreign diplomatic body go and do the legwork for the spanish companies, which wouldn't be the first time.

Germany has lots of good locations for wind, the problem is that anyone can block them, because "they don't like how they look, are noisy, too close to their home,..." and plety of other reasons.

Thus Germany could be like we have it back home in the Iberian Penisula, but no, many people are keeping the courts busy instead.

A LNG import pier is essentially a pipe where ships dock, connected to storage tanks and from which, in response to demand, liquid gas is reheated by simply letting it exchange heat with air or the sea water.

It's a straightforward piece of technology that can be built quickly by any country, unlike, say, a liquefaction plant or a LNG tanker.

Fundamentally on the physics level you are right. LNG regasification is not hard tech. It doesn't require unobtanium, probably any technologically advanced country can develop the necessary know how if they need it. Heck, at small scale you just pour the LNG out in a puddle and it will turn back to gas. :)

But building any kind of infrastructure takes time. There are some factors which make it more complicated engineering wise: cryogenic fluids, handling large quantities of flamable and explosive liquids and gasses, being built on the waterfront etc etc. None of these are insurmountable mind you! They just complicate it a bit.

One way we can look at is by comparing how long such plants took to get constructed elsewhere. I looked up a few European examples. From the first announcement to the first ship docking:

  UK/South Hook ~6 years
  UK/Dragon ~4 years
  UK/Grain ~6.2 years
  Belgium/Zeebrugge ~10 years
  Netherlands/Gate ~4 years
  Poland/Świnoujście ~9 years

(I have collected my sources on a spreadsheet here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1md_XfmrpIYhWj72Mu3BJ... )

Probably I made some mistakes in the above, and there are some inconsistencies (do we count until the first commercial ship, or the first ship trialing the facilities?) Also I assume that all of these things can be done a bit faster in case of a dire emergency. But it seems even in that best case it might take multiple winters until a regassification plant is up and running. Which is a bit cold and scary.

The gas port in Poland [1] took 4 years from start of construction to first delivery. From project start it was 9 years.

I’m not putting Poland as some kind of benchmark for speedy construction, but I think 1-2 years is a minimum even in a hurry.