"And grandfather likes"

Why no one recalls the recent plans of large -scale reform in Gazprom. The concern has one owner - Vladimir Putin: while everything suits him, there will be no fundamental changes

Since the beginning of the year, Gazprom has been expected from the beginning of the year, a large -scale restructuring and reduction in the central apparatus. The concern, due to sanctions after the military invasion of Russia to Ukraine, lost the European market and himself confirmed that it could cut about 40% of employees. This intention arose among Gazprom against the backdrop of record losses - more than a trillion of rubles, however, only for RAS, Russian accounting standards, in particular, to reduce the cost of shares of his subsidiary Gazprom Neft. From the internal document “Gazprom”, to which they gained access to FT, prepared last year, should be: the company could not do without deep reforms. Western researchers wrote about this, but with a small reservation that the Russian gas giant is a hybrid of a market company and a state bureaucratic machine, so you need to be more careful about the expectation of reforms and restructuring.

Since then, Gazprom has not heard about the reduction of state and restructuring of Gazprom (only one source flashed that the concern allegedly had already postponed the reductions twice, the last time - at the beginning of summer, but the summer is passing, and there is no news from Gazprom on this score yet).

“Important stories” tell why Gazprom is not a business in its purest form, but at the same time weapons, the performer of special instructions of the Russian authorities, a dairy cow and a kind of proper (institution for social support for the population). And only then - a joint -stock company. And there the main “shareholder” is a person who officially does not belong to, - Vladimir Putin. And he uses Gazprom not quite as a market company.

Eternal abbreviations and optimization

“Gazprom” is reduced and restructured as much as I remember, such proposals are constantly being discussed there, and the bureaucracy is still inflated, management is sitting on management, ”says the entrepreneur who has been working with Gazprom for more than 20 years and familiar with his leadership. He perceives the current messages about the reductions of the central apparatus of the concern by 40%: “There, before, if something was reduced, then the air is empty jobs [in the staff list].”

So, in 2008 it was said about the reduction of the personnel of the head office of Gazprom by 10%. “In separate divisions, the reduction will be up to 20%,” Kommersantsaid then with reference to a source close to the board of directors of the company. In 2014, they planned a large -scale reduction of 15–25% of personnel. To reduce to 500 people prepared in 2017. And a couple of years earlier, the Federal Antimonopoly Service even offered to divide Gazprom into a smaller company - separately for gas production, separately for transportation - in the image and likeness of the oil industry, where Rosneft is responsible for production, and Transneft - Transneft for transportation through the main oil pipelines.

Despite the long-term official abbreviations and ideas for optimization, in 2024 the Gazprom head office safely completely moved from the famous Moscow 35-storey candle on the street of Nametkin Street in the 87-story skyscraper “Lakhta Center” on the banks of the Gulf of Finland in St. Petersburg almost in a height of half a kilometer-the highest office complex in Russia (almost with Ostankino TV tower). Its construction cost Gazprom more than 120 billion rubles. By 2031, the concern plans to build two more towers nearby - 555 and 703 m.

Weapons, interns and dairy cow

The look at Gazprom, as a company that can be evaluated from the point of view of income and expenses, is a look from a parallel reality, which has little in common with the Russian. This is also evidenced by Gazpromov themselves.

Gazprom is simultaneously a weapon, a performer of special instructions of the Russian authorities, a dairy cow and a kind of interview - an institution for social security of the population.

The fact that Gazprom is weapons, we could see, observing the spread of prices for Russian gas for countries whose leaders are friendly in relation to the Russian government, and for those who were considered unfriendly. For loyal countries, the prices for Russian gas were set significantly lower than for non -proper ones.

So, as the Russian-Georgian relations worsen with the advent of Mikhail Saakashvili unfriendly to the Kremlin, the price of gas for Georgia in the late 2000s increased more than doubled. In 2014, after the overthrow of the Prochrevsky President Viktor Yanukovych in Kiev, the price of Russian gas for Ukraine jumped by 80%immediately. And for the Union Belarus with her permanent President Alexander Lukashenko, gas prices as they were and will be the lowest at least until 2031.

In the pre -war 2021, the International Energy Agency asked Gazprom to increase gas supplies to the European Union in order to fill in gas storage facilities that have been exhausted to a five -year minimum. Gas prices took off at that time. And Gazprom said that he would supply only contracted volumes. The press secretary of Putin at the same time made it clear that the volumes would grow only if the EU and especially Germany approve of the launch of the Northern Stream 2 gas pipeline. This looked with undisguised pressure or unwillingness to replenish European reserves on the eve of the full -scale invasion of Russia in Ukraine.

In 2024, for friendly China, prices for Russian gas were 28% lower than prices for Europe, at least until 2027, as Bloomberg reported . This is not surprising: after Russia’s loss of the European market, China, as the main buyer, had levers of pressure to get such a big discount.

The fact that Gazprom is a special forces performer is evidenced by the practices of allocating money for large -scale projects that have nothing to do with Gazprom’s specialized business. From the Gazprom Media media assets , which are also engaged in political propaganda, to a football club (FC Zenit), the construction of sports facilities, ski resorts , embankments , promenade arrangements, etc. From 2016 to 2020, only Gazprom Media Holding (included in the group of gas concern) in the form more than 71.5 billion rubles. In 2021, Gazprom wanted to spend almost 26 billion rubles to expand resorts in Krasnaya Polyana.

Gazprom is an Obess, an office for social support for the population, which, however, has long proposed to increase gas prices for Russians. In 2022, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said that the price of gas for residents of Russia is 40 times lower than in Europe. This price is where to grow, and it grows . But since Gazprom is one of the pillars of the Russian budget, and the budget is still focused on the war and needs large injections, this money can be removed from the concern in the form of an increased tax rate. Gazprom itself with its large -scale gasification programs of Russian regions is not at the expense of citizens (as Putin ordered ), apparently, can remain an interview.

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Finally, the fact that Gazprom is a dairy cow is evidenced by a long practice of osoling of close friends of the Russian president. Billionaire Arkady Rotenberg and Gennady Timchenko were among the largest Gazprom contractors. And after Putin's friends were under international sanctions, Gazprom bought contract companies from them, paying more than 160 billion rubles.

So, in 2019, Arkady Rotenberg “Gazprom” for 75 billion rubles bought back construction companies, which a little over 10 years ago he himself sold him for 8.3 billion rubles as “non -core assets”. In 2022, Gazprom bought back his former Gazprom Drilling daughter for 68 billion, which 11 years earlier sold to Rotenberg for only 4 billion rubles, in 2022. In 2020, Gennady Timchenko “Gazprom” bought its own large contractor Stroytransneftegaz for 30 billion rubles.

Even the resettlement of the “reduced” central apparatus of Gazprom from Moscow to St. Petersburg was not without the “transaction of the year”, on which the family of a long -friend Putin’s familiar KGB, a former member of Gazprom Valery Golubev, earned. The temporary office of Gazprom was provided by the St. Petersburg company Fort Group, associated with the son of Golubev, Vyacheslav. Fort Group then got a record for the premises market for a long -term Gazprom contract for 4.5 billion rubles (more about this, “Important Stories” told here ).

At the same time, Gazprom since the second half of 2022 does not pay dividends to shareholders. But, as we see, in the authorities and close president there are ways to extract money from it with a non -ornament way.

Not a champion

“Gazprom is not a profit champion, but it copes with its work very effectively,” an unnamed Kremlin official said in a commentary in 2025. So far, for Putin, Gazprom will be important to fulfill all these functions far from ordinary business, no large -scale reforms are threatening the concern.

The former consultant of the Russian government in a conversation with the journalist of “important stories” recalled how the previous Gazprom authorities reacted to criticism about corruption schemes and poor management in the concern during the presidency of Boris Yeltsin. According to the interlocutor, in the 90s in Gazprom they were laconic: "And grandfather likes it." A couple of decades have passed since then, but there have not occurred fundamental changes in this approach.