Poland's PGNiG wins $1.5 billion in court battle with Gazprom

WARSAW/MOSCOW (Reuters) - Poland's largest gas distributor PGNiG <PGN.WA> said on Monday that an international arbitration court had ruled that Russian gas giant Gazprom <GAZP.MM> must pay it about $1.5 billion in a pricing dispute case.

Polskie Gornictwo Naftowe i Gazownictwo (PGNiG) said the arbitration tribunal in Stockholm also ruled that a gas pricing formula should be changed to take into account natural gas market quotations, which would "improve the conditions of trading activity".

Gazprom Export said that it had received the Stockholm arbitration ruling and was analysing it.

"It is still too early to provide any estimates of the size of the potential payments," Gazprom Export said in a statement.

Poland is trying to reduce its reliance on Russian energy imports, where it gets more than a half of the gas it consumes.

(Reporting by Agnieszka Barteczko and Vladimir Soldatkin; writing by Vladimir Soldatkin and Polina Ivanova; editing by Susan Fenton and Jane Merriman)