"I have to start with some sad news. Namely, Estonia has run out of asphalt," Järvan said at a Tallinn city government press conference on Tuesday.

The official said Estonia usually imports bitumen from two sources in Sweden and Lithuania.

"And for reasons still unknown, the Swedish company decided not to bring any more. It said that the ship that arrived three weeks ago would be the last this year. The next one will come in the spring. The Lithuanian company was delighted, immediately raised its prices, and then its factory broke down. This means that asphalt plants in Estonia can no longer obtain bitumen," the deputy mayor said.

"What this means nationally is that those construction companies that have their own asphalt plants probably have their own contracts covered and, as usual, any surplus asphalt is put on the open market," he added.

Tallinn is affected by the issue as the second supplementary budget set aside money for roadworks this autumn.

"Now both of the City of Tallinn's partners have said that, unfortunately, the market situation is such that asphalt is simply unavailable. And this means that we are in a situation where we can happily announce that we have asphalt for resurfacing Liivalaia. We have to take a positive view of what we have," Järvan said.

Asphalting work on Liivalaia began on Monday, and Tallinn will grant an additional two weeks for this work, the deputy mayor added.

"But this also means that we will not take the risk of milling up Viljandi maantee and Vabaõhumuuseumi tee to lay new asphalt there. We will still avoid a situation where we have streets dug up for the winter and no asphalt to put down in their place," Järvan said.

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