Russ Oil-Gas

10 April 2007 - Upstream onLine - Russian gas monopoly Gazprom said today that its gas reserves rose by 2.4% to 29.8 trillion cubic metres last year, reflecting a reserves revision for the Shtokman field, in the Barents Sea. "Gazprom's gas reserves falling into the ABC1 categories (under the Russian classification system) stood at 29.8 trillion cubic metres as of 1 January 2007," Nail Gafarov, deputy head of Gazprom's production department, told a conference. The increase from last year's figure of 29.1 Tcm is largely covered by a reassessment of reserves at Shtokman, which rose to 3.7 Tcm from the previous figure of 3.2 Tcm. Gazprom wants to start production at the Barents Sea field in 2013-2015 and is talking to potential partners, including ConocoPhillips, Total, Statoil and Norsk Hydro. Gazprom produced 552 billion cubic metres of gas last year. It has said its reserves could double by 2020 due to exploration of new regions such as East Siberia and the Arctic.