KTE, which was acquired by Gazprom back in 2003, was sold after around a year of negotiations.
Pranculis said that the value of the deal was over 100 million litas (EUR 29m). However, he would not disclose the specific sum.
Arūnas Armalis, the communication coordinator at KTE, told BNS that he could not disclose the value of the deal.
Meanwhile, KTE reported that the company’s shareholders meeting which was held earlier on Thursday appointed a new board, which would be chaired by Stonys. Pranculis would continue as the plant’s CEO, the press release said.
According to Stonys, the key priority for KTE is to shift to the use of biofuel as soon as possible and to lower the price of heat for the city of Kaunas, the second biggest in Lithuania. The plant was currently holding talks with a potential contractor on the construction of a new biofuel boiler, he said.
The company wanted the new biofuel boiler to start generating heat as early as in the fall of 2015, Stonys added.
It was announced back in August 2012 that the deal had virtually been finalized, but the closing date had been repeatedly pushed back.
The municipal heating utility Kauno Energija (Kaunas Energy) sold its shares in KTE to Gazprom for 116.5 million litas (EUR 33.7m) in 2003. The Russian group then promised to maintain its majority shareholding in the plant until 2018 and to invest several hundred million litas in upgrading the plant, which it has not done.
Last spring, Gazprom decided to sell KTE, following several years of disagreements with Kaunas authorities over the Russian company's failure to meet its investment commitments and due to disapproval by both the central and local authorities of its project to build a new power plant worth around one billion litas (EUR 290m).
