"Oil shale fields owned by Eesti Energia are not simply assets belonging to a single company that can be bought and sold. First, Estonia's oil shale constitutes a strategic reserve on which our energy security depends. Second, Eesti Energia is a state-owned company that belongs to the people. Estonia has no other energy source under its direct control," said Mihhail Kõlvart.

According to Kõlvart, a public debate should have preceded the decision to sell the Uus-Kiviõli mine — along with an estimated 100 million tons of oil shale — to Viru Keemia Grupp (VKG). Instead, the decision was made behind closed cabinet doors by a government with just over 10 percent public support.

"The current government, which has long had an extremely low public trust rating, has no mandate whatsoever to make decisions with a 30-year impact at the expense of Estonia's most important natural resource and energy security," Kõlvart said. "It may be a political choice to what extent we use our strategic natural resource and people can decide that every four years in elections. But no one has the authority to permanently dispose of this strategic reserve."

Kõlvart also described the secrecy surrounding the deal as particularly cynical, noting that the parties refused to disclose the transaction price.

"The public is not even given an overview of the price at which decades' worth of energy resources were handed over. The chairman of the management board of Eesti Energia subsidiary Enefit Industry tried in the press to reassure people that at least €3 million previously invested in the mine has been recouped. But that is a mere fraction compared with the billions that this oil shale reserve is actually worth," he said.

The Estonian Center Party is demanding that the details of the transaction be made public and that a legal analysis be conducted on the possibility of reversing the deal. The government must also disclose when the decision was made and by whom, Kõlvart added.

"The government has completely lost touch with reality in the field of energy," the Center Party leader continued. "Without oil shale, we are entirely at the mercy of international suppliers — our daily lives would depend on the goodwill of other countries."

It turned out in early April that Eesti Energia, which had sought a permit to mine oil shale in Uus-Kiviõli and had also taken the matter to court against VKG, had decided late last year April to transfer the entire mining area to VKG. The move will secure raw material for VKG's oil production industry for 30 years, as the company prepares to open the Uus-Kiviõli mine this summer.

The dispute over the Uus-Kiviõli oil shale mining fields lasted about two decades. Initially, the Ministry of the Environment granted a mining permit to Enefit Mines, a subsidiary of Eesti Energia. VKG challenged the decision and the Supreme Court of Estonia ruled in its favor in 2017. The companies later reached an agreement under which two-thirds of the mining area would belong to Enefit and one-third to VKG.

VKG began preparations to open the mine, as its Ojamaa mine is expected to be depleted and closed by the end of 2027. Enefit, meanwhile, kept its share of the Uus-Kiviõli fields in reserve, as it had sufficient oil shale supply from the Narva quarry and the Estonia mine.

State expectations for Enefit's use of oil shale have declined over time. The company concluded it was economically viable to focus production on the Estonia mine, deciding to close the Narva quarry and withdraw from Uus-Kiviõli.

"Our goal is to use the Estonia mine as a single source to supply both oil production and electricity generation. We have used it for decades and there is still room for development and growth for years to come," said Enefit Industry CEO Lauri Karp.

Enefit and VKG declined to disclose the purchase price of the Uus-Kiviõli mining area.

According to Enefit, the company did not incur losses from the transaction and did not have to write off the approximately €3 million it had invested in Uus-Kiviõli.

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