Lithuania’s Achema concludes gas deal with Statoil

“Negotiations are essentially over. Both Statoil representatives and Achema’s negotiators concluded talks on the principles of LNG supply and prices for this year,” Achema CEO Ramūnas Miliauskas said in a statement. “The LNG supply talks lasted almost a year and we have agreed on the volumes and principles of pricing.”

Achema, one of the biggest industrial companies in Lithuania, based in Jonava, accounts for over half of natural gas consumption in the country and buys it directly from suppliers rather than via state-owned distributors like Lietuvos Dujos and Litgas.

Until now, Achema used to buy all its gas from Russia’s Gazprom, but decided to diversify after the launch of Lithuania’s LNG terminal at the end of 2014, which allows importing gas from other suppliers.

“We conducted negotiations over natural gas – raw material used in fertilizer production that makes up 80% of our production cost – with Gazprom, Statoil and other suppliers from around the world,” Miliauskas said, adding that Statoil could offer a much better price than Gazprom.

The price Achema will pay for Statoil’s gas in 2016 is indexed to the UK’s National Balancing Point.