New call: by Gazprom for the exclusive rights to six undeveloped gas fields
Gazprom 'asks Kremlin for fields favour'
Russian gas giant Gazprom has asked the Kremlin to hand it the rights to develop six gas fields - which will serve as its future production base - without putting them up for auction first, a government source has claimed.
"In February, the head of Gazprom, Alexei Miller, sent a letter to Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov requesting his company be given the fields without an auction," the source told Reuters.
He did not name the fields in question, but claimed Miller hoped the Kremlin would exercise a gas supply law which allows the government to transfer gas deposits of state significance to whom it wishes, a Reuters report said.
The fields are spread across Russia's resource-rich North, including the Arctic Yamal peninsula and the Karskoye sea shelf, and will serve as Gazprom's main production base after 2020, when its current fields will mature, he added.
Gazprom declined to comment.
Gazprom has said half of its production will come from new fields after 2020, when the company plans to produce between 650 billion and 670 billion cubic metres of gas per year, up from the 570 Bcm it aims to have by 2010.
Earlier this month, Zubkov awarded Gazprom the rights to develop the large Chayanda gas field in Siberia in the country's first tender-free transfer.
The world's largest gas company had previously asked the government to give it out-of-competition rights to develop Chayanda, in Yakutia in the country's Far East.
Chayanda, which has estimated gas reserves of 1.2 trillion cubic metres, was added to Russia's list of "strategic" assets in December last year.
The assets have been deemed necessary for Russia to survive independently and are off-limits for development by foreign companies.
Natural Resources Minister Yuri Trutnev has previously said any field containing 70 million tonnes of oil, 50 billion cubic metres of gas, 50 tonnes of gold or 500,000 tonnes of copper should qualify as strategic.