Russ Oil-Gas

MOSCOW, June 15 (RIA Novosti) - Gazprom [RTS: GAZP] moved Friday for the government to waive competitive bidding procedures when issuing licenses to develop natural gas deposits, eyeing the Sakhalin III project in the Far East. Alexander Ananenkov, a deputy chairman of the Russian energy giant's management committee, told a parliamentary commission: "We would like a law to be passed under which licenses would, in exceptional circumstances, be issued at the discretion of the Russian government to ensure the implementation of intergovernmental agreements on natural gas deliveries from Russia." He said the existing license distribution system jeopardizes, in particular, an intergovernmental agreement with South Korea, adding that to ensure stable gas supplies, the license for the Sakhalin III project should be issued to Gazprom. He said there is no other resource base except Gazprom to ensure that Russian gas shipments to South Korea start in 2012 as planned. The field in the Sea of Okhotsk holds over 800 million metric tons (5.86 billion bbl) of oil and more than 900 billion cubic meters of gas in estimated reserves. The state-controlled oil company Rosneft holds a license to develop the Venin block off Sakhalin Island. It holds a 49.8% in the block's operator, Venineft. The region's Sakhalin Oil Company and China's Sinopec each own the remaining 25.1%. U.S. companies Mobil, Texaco, and Exxon won a tender for licenses on the three remaining blocks of the field in 1993 under a production-sharing agreement (PSA), but the Russian government annulled the results of the tender in 2004, citing changes in tax laws on PSAs. Gazprom said earlier it aims to become a major oil and gas producer and distributor on Sakhalin Island and is interested in buying the entire gas deposits under the Sakhalin I project. The project, operated under a production-sharing agreement by Exxon Neftegas Limited, a subsidiary of U.S. oil major ExxonMobil, is located on Sakhalin's northeastern shelf, and is expected to bring around $52.2 billion to the Russian budget by 2054, when production is scheduled to end.

'Other deals' slow Gazpom-E.ON talks

06.14.2007 - Upstream OnLine - Russian gas giant Gazprom said today that talks about jointly developing the Yuzhno-Russkoye gas field, in Siberia, with Germany's E.ON had been slow because it was so busy with other parts of its portfolio. "One of the reasons why we couldn't close the transaction with E.ON on time was the fact that we had to close a number of projects that diverted a lot of human resources," Gazprom's deputy chief executive Alexander Medvedev told Reuters. "It did indeed slow down the pace of talks. But it will resume more actively now," he told a news conference. Last year Gazprom agreed to sell a stake of 25% minus one share in its Yuzhno-Russkoye field to E.ON's Ruhrgas unit. E.ON agreed to pay Gazprom €1.2 billion ($1.6 billion) and to give it just under 50% of its Hungarian gas trading and storage units. E.ON holds around 6.4% of Gazprom's stock. Last month a German newspaper said Gazprom wanted to charge E.ON more for the stake because it thought the value of its gas had risen since the original deal. But the German company said there were no special problems. Another German firmplayer, BASF is also involved in Yuzhno-Russkoye. Its Wintershall subsidiary has 35% minus one share in Severneftegazprom, the Gazprom-controlled company that is developing the field. Both E.ON and Wintershall are also minority partners in the Gazprom-led Nord Stream pipeline, which will supply gas from Yuzhno-Russkoye under the Baltic Sea to Germany. Gazprom has promised 9% of the pipeline to Dutch gas outfit Gasunie in return for a share in a Dutch pipeline to Britain. The 9% will come out of E.ON and Wintershall's stakes in Nord Stream. Gazprom has not said how it will compensate them for the loss of their equity, nor has it completed the deal to bring Gasunie in as a minority shareholder in Nord Stream.