Russ Oil-Gas

February 6, 2007 - The Moscow Times - Gazprom on Monday nominated two Moscow business figures as independent members of its board of directors. The board nominated Alexander Shokhin, the head of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, or RSPP, and Yevgeny Yasin, the rector of the Higher School of Economics, Gazprom said in a statement Monday. Gazprom shareholders will choose a new board from 19 candidates on June 29, the company said. All 11 current members, including First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, CEO Alexei Miller and Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref, are on the new list. Shokhin, the head of the RSPP since 2005, is a former chairman of Renaissance Capital's supervisory board. Shokhin will head a delegation of RSPP members at a meeting with President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin on Tuesday, ahead of the organization's 15th-anniversary celebration Wednesday. Yasin, who served as economy minister under President Boris Yeltsin, is one of the country's most respected liberal academics. The Gazprom board also decided to sell a 50.67 percent stake in its petrochemical unit, Sibur Holding. Gazprom has been in talks with potential buyers BASF, Dow Chemical and PetroChina for more than two years. The board also said that by 2011 it planned to increase daily output capacity from underground storage facilities by more than one-quarter.