Eesti Gaas is owned by holding company Infortar.

Eesti Gaas board chair Margus Kaasik said: "The start of the year will see the price of gas almost halved."

As to reasons for this, Kaasik said: "The market as a whole is calming down, and gas is becoming affordable again, compared with the past heating season; even multiple times more affordable."

Whereas a cubic meter of gas costs domestic consumers 75 cents for the month of December, it will drop to 60 cents from January, and then to 49.5 cents per cubic meter from February.

The picture with security of supply as the war in Ukraine nears its second anniversary is, in Estonia, good – storage tanks are full, while Europe-wide, the relatively mild winter so far has led to a surplus.

Natural gas from Russia, the main source for Estonia prior to the invasion, stopped flowing nearly 18 months ago, necessitating a full pivot in a westerly direction.

Now, Liquefied Natural gas (LNG) is imported, primarily from the U.S. and from Norway, to LNG terminals at Inkoo, Finland, and Klaipeda, Lithuania. Estonia also has its own terminal at Paldiski.

Reserve storage for all three Baltic states is primarily held at underground tanks in Inčukalns, Latvia.

Natural gas prices started soaring even ahead of the invasion of Ukraine, and from around late summer 2021, topping the €4 per cubic meter-mark in September 2022.

This all happened at the same time as electricity and other energy prices were rapidly rising, leading to support measures being put in place by the government.

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