Lithuanian state-owned gas trader Lietuvos Duju Tiekimas (LDT) has signed a deal with US company Koch Industries for LNG gas supplies, newswires reported on September 28.

Koch Supply and Trading will deliver 2mn MWh of LNG at an undisclosed price, Reuters reports. The supplies will cover about a third of LDT’s demand for gas in 2017, the CEO of the company said. A subsidiary of state-owned energy group Lietuvos Energija, LDT imports and supplies gas to around 650,000 customers in Lithuania.

"Arrival of a new supplier to the Lithuanian market indicates growing competition among liquefied natural gas (LNG) suppliers, and this benefits us," Lietuvos Energija CEO Dalius Misiunas said in a press release.

"The gas can be delivered from various places, including from the United States of America," LDT CEO Mantas Mikalajunas claimed. The gas will arrive to Lithuania’s LNG terminal in Klaipeda, launched at the start of 2015 and the only alternative supplier to Russia in the Baltic states.

Lithuania has a supply contract with Norway’s Statoil in place and preliminary agreements with other US suppliers. LDT is also looking to secure other supply contracts and does not exclude talking to Gazprom, a spokesperson told the newswire.

Statoil will supply Lithuania with around 3.2mn MWh of gas this year. Vilnius will also purchase pipeline gas Gazprom, mostly residual gas from the long-term contract it held with the Russian supplier until the end of 2015.

The Russia gas company has been losing ground in the Balties states in recent years; its former monopoly now exists only in Latvia. Riga, however, is pushing to gain control of its infrastructure from Russian-controlled Latvijas Gaze.