Russ Oil-Gas

MOSCOW, June 27 (RIA Novosti) - A United States appeals court rejected a claim filed against Gazprom by U.S. oil company Moncrief Oil International, the Russian energy giant said Wednesday. The U.S. Fifth District Court of Appeals ruled that it had no jurisdiction over the Russian natural gas monopoly. American billionaire Richard Moncrief, president of Moncrief Oil International, filed the lawsuit in a Texas court against Gazprom, demanding that it either return the right to develop the Yuzhno-Russkoye natural gas field in Russia or pay several billion dollars as compensation for lost profits. On March 21, 2006, a Texan court granted Gazprom's petition to throw out a claim filed by Moncrief Oil. The Yuzhno-Russkoye gas field, with estimated recoverable reserves of 700 billion cubic meters, is to be the main source of natural gas supplies along the Nord Stream pipeline, set to run under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany. In the late 1990s Moncrief signed an agreement with Vladimir Nikiforov, then director general of regional energy producer Zapsibgazprom, to set up a joint venture to develop the Yuzhno-Russkoye deposit in the northern Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Area. Moncrief pledged to invest about $1 billion in the project. In 1999, a different company, Severneftegazprom, was established to develop Yuzhno-Russkoye. But in 2001 it emerged that Severneftegazprom was controlled by structures that had close ties to Russian gas trader Itera, while Zapsibgazprom was already controlled by the ill-fated Yukos. These companies said that they did not have any dealings with Moncrief over the gas field. By the end of 2002, Gazprom had regained 85% of Zapsibgazprom and control over the license to develop Yuzhno-Russkoye. However, it was not until July 2004 that the company management learned of Moncrief's interest in the deposit.