The biggest natural gas producer of the world, Russia’s Gazprom has demanded that the Lithuanian government abolishes regulated of natural gas prices for industrial consumers.

Lithuanian state commission on prices and energy decided to lower natural gas for a number of wholesale consumers who buy more than one million cubic meters of gas a year by six percent.

Lietuvos dujos, Lithuania’s natural gas distributor which is 37.1 percentt owned by Gazprom, may, according to the gas monopoly’s deputy board chairman Alexander Ryazanov, “suffer about 25 million litas (7.2 million euros or almost $9 million) in losses.”

The Lithuanian authorities pledged to deregulate prices for companies consuming more than a million cubic meters of natural gas a year when Gazprom made a deal to purchase the Lietuvos dujos stake.

Gazprom said that if its demand is left unfulfilled, natural gas prices for Lithuania will grow more rapidly than expected.