Reliance on Soviet Fuel Sparks Crisis in Latvia : Resources: Deliveries have slowed to a trickle since the republic broke away from the union in September.

Harjis Ruppeks is learning that independence has its price.

The 23-year-old trucker fervently believes in the new freedom, but because of it, he and others who depend on their vehicles face a severe shortage of gasoline and skyrocketing prices for it.

Latvia’s 2.7 million people depend on the Soviet Union for 90% of their energy and had paid well below world rates.

Soviet deliveries, irregular in the best of times, have slowed to a trickle since Latvia broke away in September. Latvian officials refused fuel to passenger cars during October and diverted it to industry.

In November, the Soviet Union began charging world prices for oil delivered to Latvia and the other newly independent Baltic states, Estonia and Lithuania, which also limit sales to individuals.

Energy is not the only part of the Baltic economy affected by independence: Lithuanian officials claim that the Soviet Union also is failing to deliver promised tractors, metals and sugar.

Although shortages of consumer goods do not appear worse than before, Balts worry about future supplies, fearing dependence on a Soviet economy increasingly unable to deliver goods.

For Ruppeks, who hauls food to the Riga market, the cost of gasoline could triple.

“I can try and sell the food at a higher price, but I’m not sure where the money will come from,” he said. Ruppeks is afraid his truck, which gets about 10 miles to the gallon, will become too expensive to operate if gasoline prices keep rising.

Latvia’s only plentiful energy resource is firewood, making it the most dependent of the Baltic countries. Lithuania has an oil refinery and nuclear power plant, and Estonia has large oil shale reserves.

When Soviet oil went to world prices, the cost of petroleum products to Latvia roughly doubled.

“The real question is whether there will be gas at all,” said Aldis Ancanas, a 27-year-old computer technician who needs his car for the 30-mile commute to his job in Riga. “That will force up the price.”

Officials said Latvia received none of the 340,000 barrels of gasoline contracted for in September and only 8,500 of the 340,000 barrels scheduled for delivery in October.

Gasoline consumption is about 20,000 barrels a day, and current stocks will meet industrial and emergency needs until April, they said. One barrel equals 42 gallons.

Ints Jansons, director of Latvia Nafta, the government agency responsible for fuel distribution, accused customs officials in neighboring Russia and Byelorussia of stopping gasoline shipments as part of a “covert blockade.”

He also said Latvian railroad officials refuse to send tankers to other republics for fear that the cars won’t return.

Latvia is negotiating to buy fuel of various kinds from Finland and plans to purchase coal from Poland with hard currency from foreign loans. Officials propose a 920% increase in the domestic price of coal to cover the higher cost.

Some gasoline stations in Riga, the capital, have longer lines than usual, but there has been no apparent panic buying or decrease in passenger-car traffic.

Newspaper editor Alda Staprane, 27, said Latvians had been prepared for the worst by years of irregular Soviet supplies and the Kremlin’s energy blockade of Lithuania in 1990.

“I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have 10 gallons of gas in their garage,” she said. “It is standard practice these days.”

Ancanas, the computer technician, said he has 20 gallons stored in his garage and some people have tanks of gasoline in their back yards.

“You can call them profiteers or black marketeers,” he said. “They store it up for the purpose of selling it, but if you need gas, you buy it from them.”

Zeidonis Blumbergs, the deputy energy minister, said Latvia could get 2.5 million barrels of crude oil the Russian republic owes from a barter agreement, but has no way to refine it.

He said Latvia hopes to build a refinery and that any Western aid it receives should be spent on solving long-term energy problems, “not on simply buying more fuel.”