Lithuania to pay 20% less for Russian gas

Price for Russian monopoly Gazprom’s gas supplied to Lithuania will drop no less than 20%, Lithuanian Prime Minister Algirdas Butkevicius said in an interview to the national radio. The new tariff will take effect on July 1. Price reduction follows the agreement signed last week between Lietuvos Dujos (Gas of Lithuania) and Gazprom. The tariff set by the parties would be analyzed and approved by the state commission on energy price and control, said Butkevicius.

The long-term agreement concluded till the end of 2016 did not change Vilnius’s position on its lawsuit against Gazprom in the international arbitration court in Stockholm, Butkevicius added.

The Lithuanian Government insists it had overpaid 4.5 billion litas (1.3 billion euro) for Gazprom’s gas, as the price of about $500 per 1,000 cubic metres was “unfair”. Gazprom has been reported to have agreed to drop the price, if Lithuania revoked the lawsuit.

Lietuvos Dujos did not reveal the discount, while Lithuanian paper Verslo Zinios reported Gazprom had proposed an almost 20% price reduction to $370 per 1,000 cubic metres. According to the paper’s sources, Gazprom suggested a number of additional pre-conditions, which Lithuania deemed unacceptable.

Lithuania is the only Baltic country that insisted during implementation of the EU Third Package that gas transportation facilities were spinned off from Lietuvos Dujos, where Gazprom is one of the major investing shareholders with 37.1%Gazprom is now the only gas supplier for Lithuania. Gas export is based on long-term agreements active through 2015.

The Russian monopoly is prepared to sell its share in the facilities, which were spinned off on August 1, 2013 and transferred to Lietuvos Dujos’s subsidiary Amber Grid but Lithuania is not yet ready to buy.

E.ON Ruhrgas holds 38.9% of Lietuvos Dujos’s share capital; the Lithuanian Government owns 17.7%