Rūta Bučinskaitė of the Lithuanian Supreme Court confirmed to BNS that Gazprom on filed its appeal against the Lithuanian Appeals Court's decision on January 4.
"It has been accepted for hearing and included onto the list of cassation appeals," she told BNS.
On December 17 last year, the Lithuanian Court of Appeals refused to recognize the Stockholm arbitration tribunal's decision and to enforce it in the country.
Gazprom then said in a statement that the court's decision raised doubts as to Lithuania's readiness to meet its international commitments and showed a failure in protecting foreign investors' rights in the country.
The Russian supplier said that Lithuania had not only breached the requirements of Lietuvos Dujos' (Lithuanian Gas) shareholder agreement, but had also refused to enforce an international arbitration award.
The Court of Appeals judicial panel stated that recognizing and enforcing the arbitration court's decision in Lithuania would be contrary to the country's public policy.
In August 2011, Gazprom filed a suit against the Lithuanian state with the Stockholm Arbitration Institute, saying that the Energy Ministry's initiation of a court probe into Lietuvos Dujos' activities had breached an agreement among the company's shareholders - the State Assets Fund, Gazprom, and Ruhrgas - to refer all their disputes to arbitration. The Russian gas giant asked that the arbitration court order the Energy Ministry to discontinue the hearing of the case at Vilnius Regional Court.
The arbitration court ruled last July that the Energy Ministry's suit had partially violated the March 24, 2004, agreement among the shareholders and ordered that it drop some of its demands, for example, that the court should order Lietuvos Dujos to start negotiations with Gazprom over a fair gas price.
On September 3, 2012, Vilnius Regional Court turned down Lietuvos Dujos' request to suspend the case, saying that the dispute was not within arbitration jurisdiction.
Lithuania's former government said that Gazprom was applying discriminatory prices to the country, which is the first Baltic state that is implementing the EU's third energy package and aims to unbundle the assets of Lietuvos Dujos, in which the Russian supplier holds a significant stake, by the end of 2014.
