Lithuanian court halts LNG terminal tender over pipeline construction
VILNIUS. March 11 (Interfax) - A Lithuanian court has halted the tender announced by Klaipedos nafta to select the contractor for construction of a pipeline to the planned LNG terminal in the port of Klaipeda.
The injunction applies to the tender that has been announced for a second time, Tomas Puksmys, a judicial assistant at Kaunas district court, told BNS.
The suit was filed by Lithuania's Kauno dujotiekio statyba, which was outbid in the tender.
"Temporary protection measures are in force. All procedures have been halted in order to ensure that the court's decision is carried out, so that protection for the plaintiff who filed in court will be effective, if a procedural decision favorable to it is made," Puksmys said.
Kauno dujotiekio statyba apparently submitted a higher bid for the pipeline construction job than a rival bidder, Germany's PPS Pipeline Systems, BNS reported, citing unofficial information. Both companies proposed a lower price in the follow-up tender than they did the first time around.
Klaipedos nafta announced the repeat tender in February, after receiving notification from the Competitive Procurement Service that it had violated procedures during the original tender when it changed the evaluation criteria. The regulator demanded that the company return to the original terms of the tender as they were on November 28, which established that in selecting the winner, Klaipedos nafta would be 80% guided by the proposed price and 20% guided by the proposed timeframes of the work to be performed (the latest deadline being August 2014).
PPS Pipeline Systems, which made its primary proposal on October 15 of last year, offered to carry out the contracting work for 210.811 million litai. The Lithuanian consortium, meanwhile, offered to do the work for 220.877 million litai. After negotiations held in October and November, on November 28 Klaipedos nafta asked both participants to submit their final proposals, and on December 3 it decided to change the pricing criteria by focusing exclusively on the proposed price, instead of giving priority to timeframes.
On December 20, Klaipedos nafta declared the Lithuanian consortium the winner of the tender, with a final offer of 166.979 million litai (with VAT) for the work.
PPS Pipeline (192.182 million litai) disagreed with the company's decision and sent a complaint to the Competitive Procurement Service and filed a lawsuit with the Klaipeda court.
According to the terms of the tender, the contractor has two years to design and lay the almost 20-kilometer gas pipeline from the moorings at the LNG terminal to the distribution stations of the company Lietuvos dujos, installing gas equipment at the wharves, outfitting a gas-metering station, telecommunications, engineering and other systems. This gas pipeline is one of the most important components of the LNG terminal infrastructure project.
The LNG terminal is being built to provide an alternative to pipeline gas from Gazprom .
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