Russ Oil-Gas

25 January 2008 - Upstream OnLine - Russia's Gazprom will sign an agreement with OMV today which will boost co-operation at the Austrian producer's Baumgarten gas hub, Gazprom's deputy chairman Aleksandr Medvedev said. In May, Gazprom and OMV signed a memorandum of understanding for the Russian gas export monopoly to take a stake in OMV's trading platform, Central European Gas Hub, in Baumgarten on the Slovakian border, and to establish joint storage projects. Medvedev wrote in the Presse daily on Friday that the Russian company welcomed OMV's invitation to strengthen its participation in Baumgarten, a Reuters report said. "OMV's pipeline intersection in Baumgarten is today one of the most important gas transit points in Europe, through which around one third of all Russian gas exports to Europe are distributed," Medvedev wrote. OMV has scheduled a news conference with Gazprom in Vienna at 1630 GMT. Russia supplies a quarter of the European Union's gas. The Baumgarten hub handled 7.7 billion cubic metres of gas in 2006 and 1.3 Bcm per month ilast year, according to OMV.