| Alexey Miller negotiated the supply of liquefied gas to the USA in London Last Friday, Gazprom Chairman of the Board Alexey Miller met in London with the heads of the world's three largest oil corporations - British BP, Anglo-Dutch Shell and American ExxonMobil. All negotiations, to one degree or another, touched upon the topic of cooperation in the American liquefied natural gas (LNG) market, entry into which Gazprom declared one of its priorities. Thus, we can talk about the official registration of a list of potential partners of Gazprom for the implementation of the Shtokman project, which involves the development of a giant field on the shelf of the Barents Sea (3.2 trillion cubic meters of gas), a project for liquefying gas, transporting LNG and selling it on the markets of the east coast USA and Northern Europe. In addition to the listed companies, the Norwegian Statoil, as well as the American ConocoPhillips and ChevronTexaco are planning to cooperate with Gazprom. The deadline for making investment decisions is also clear: March-April 2005. All applicants have offshore and liquefied natural gas experience and have marketing capabilities in the United States.
However, Gazprom is currently discussing specific pilot projects in the United States only with BP and Statoil, which apparently indicates their closer cooperation. Obviously, this is a significant trump card for the British and Norwegians in further negotiations. Moreover, BP is ready to begin working with Gazprom on the American market right now, without waiting for the start of implementation of the Shtokman project.
On Friday, the Gazprom press service, following a two-hour meeting between Mr. Miller and the head of BP, Lord Brown, reported that the parties were negotiating an exchange of “pipe” gas, which the concern supplies to Europe, for liquefied gas owned by BP in the United States. “The meeting discussed possible cooperation between Gazprom and BP in the liquefied natural gas market in the short term (exchange operations) and in the long term (joint participation in regasification terminal projects and gas sales in the US and UK markets),” the press statement says. -release of the Russian concern. According to a source at Gazprom, negotiations between Gazexport (which will be the agent in these transactions) and BP have been going on for quite some time. Alexey Miller and John Brown confirmed their serious intention to cooperate in this direction at the political level. As the head of Gazprom recently said, we are talking about exchanges as early as next year. It is too early to talk about the specific volume of supplies, however, most likely, at the first stage it will amount to 1-2 billion cubic meters per year. Nevertheless, Gazprom considers this an important step towards entering the US market with a real volume of Shtokman gas.
The meeting with BP management was quite lengthy and tense also because the companies have joint projects in the Far East and a serious conflict of interests around the Kovyktinskoye field, which is controlled by the Anglo-Russian TNK-BP. “The prospects for the development of the gas industry in Eastern Siberia and the Far East were discussed at the meeting,” says a Gazprom press release. “A unanimous opinion was expressed that the development of the Kovyktinskoye field should be carried out in conjunction with other fields in Eastern Siberia and the Far East, including marketing issues in the domestic and foreign markets.” Representatives of BP left the meeting without comment, but the Russian company says that the wording was agreed upon. However, the head of TNK-BP, Robert Dudley, spoke with such ideas in the British press. This means that no breakthrough has happened in this direction, and TNK-BP is still under the threat of losing Kovykta due to failure to fulfill the license agreement.
At Mr. Miller's meeting with the management of Shell (which is also considered as a participant in the Shtokman project), the central issue was the joint implementation of other projects. Negotiations on the exchange of a share in the Sakhalin-2 project, operated by an Anglo-Dutch corporation, for participation in the development of the Neocomian deposits of the Zapolyarnoye field have entered, according to a source in Gazprom, the final stage - “commercial trade on specific terms” . The negotiating positions of the parties, according to Vremya Novostei, are as follows. Gazprom wants to receive a blocking stake in Sakhalin-2 in exchange for a 50 percent share in the development of Zapolyarny without Shell’s right to independently export its share of the gas. The partners offer 20% in the Sakhalin project and ask for the right to export gas from Zapolyarny. Alexey GRIVACHS |
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