Russ Oil-Gas

July 22, 2008 - Kommersant - Britain’s division of Gazprom, Gazprom Marketing & Trading, and Spain’s Gas Natural SDG have clinched a deal for the LNG supplies to Spain. People in Gazprom said this move will help build up a flexible system for supplying the gas acquired, for instance, in Libya or Azerbaijan. GM&T and Gas Natural SDG inked July 2 a framework agreement on the terms for LNG supplies to Spain, GM&T reported in its press release yesterday. According to Frederic Barnaud, GM&T's LNG director , the project is a good chance to widen the LNG sales before the launch of Shtokman in April 2013. The plans are that the Shtokman gas will be delivered via pipelines and by tankers to the United States and the EU. The framework agreement also promotes the strategic cooperation in part of the energy sales and quotas on greenhouse gas. In GM&T, they didn’t specify the exact amount of deliveries yesterday. Of interest is that so far, the laws of Spain had prevented Gazprom from entering the country’s market on fears of the price collision with Algerian Sonatrack. Under the EuroGas report, Spain consumed 37.7 billion cu meters of gas in 2007, and LNG covered two thirds of it. Algeria (37 percent) is the key supplier of gas to Spain. But unlike Sonatrack, Gas Natural SDG is the main division of Spain’s Gas Natural. The biggest holders of GN are La Caixa Bank (35.5 percent in the company) and Repsol YPF (30.5 percent).