Lietuvos Dujos' main shareholders need some additional time for negotiations on an unbundling method, on certain provisions of the shareholders' agreement and share purchase and sale agreements, on gas transit to the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, and on the terms of future gas purchases, the company said in a statement to the NASDAQ OMX Vilnius stock exchange on Friday.
Last Wednesday, the Lithuanian National Control Commission for Prices and Energy gave Lietuvos Dujos two more months, until 31 May, to submit a final ownership unbundling plan.
The Energy Ministry called on the regulator to grant the extension of the 31 March deadline, saying that an unbundling model had to be chosen by aligning the interests of all parties and that the government was holding talks with one of the two biggest shareholders, Russia's Gazprom.
Lietuvos Dujos' management board proposed to unbundle its operations into three companies. Based on available information, natural gas transmission pipelines should be spun off into a new company, which, according to unofficial sources, would be owned by the government. Lietuvos Dujos would continue to operate as a gas supplier, while its distribution pipelines would be taken over by a newly established subsidiary. The latter two companies would be owned by Gazprom jointly with E.ON.
E.ON Ruhrgas International owns 38.9 percent of shares in Lietuvos Dujos, Gazprom holds 37.1 percent, and the Energy Ministry holds 17.7 percent. Lietuvos Dujos is quoted on the blue-chip Main List of the Vilnius stock exchange.
