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Monday, 08 September, 2008, 17:50 GMT | more prices >>

Gazprom primed for $420bn spree



By Upstream staff 

Russian gas monopoly Gazprom will invest $420 billion in the gas sector by 2030 to ensure enough supplies to the domestic market and exports, chairman Dmitry Medvedev said in remarks published today.

"It is an average of $18 billion per year. We have the money and it will be invested," Medvedev told Moscow-based daily Vedomosti in an interview.

Medvedev rebutted criticism that state-controlled Gazprom was investing too little in production and instead chasing after acquisitions - including taking control of the Sakhalin 2 and Kovykta gas projects previously run by Western oil majors.

He said that joint ventures and asset swap deals with foreign partners would help ensure that Gazprom can supply the market in full.

"Fears that there will be a deficit of gas on the Russian market are groundless," he said in an interview. "There is only one gas shortage - for those who want to buy it on the cheap."

Gazprom has said it was considering possible swap deals with a number of foreign companies, such as E.ON, BASF and BP.

Gazprom, which supplies of a quarter of Europe's gas needs, produced 556 billion cubic metres of natural gas last year and plans to raise output to 940 Bcm by 2020.

It charges its Western European customers an average of $260 per 1000 of cubic metres of gas and has had a series of run-ins with neighbour states like Ukraine and Belarus to push them to pay higher prices.

Domestic price caps are being gradually raised and will more than double to $125 per Mcm for industrial customers by 2011.


Thursday, 05 July, 2007, 09:31 GMT  | last updated: Thursday, 05 July, 2007, 09:31 GMT

Russia's Deputy Prime Minister and OAO Gazprom Board of Directors' Chairman Dmitry Medvedev attends the annual general meeting of the company's shareholders, Moscow, Friday, June 29, 2007. Russia's OAO Gazprom, the world's biggest gas producer, said Thursday that its net profits in 2006 nearly doubled from the year before, as it reaped huge revenues from an unusually cold European winter. A logo of Gazprom is seen at left. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)
 

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