Russ Oil-Gas

15 April 2009 - The Moscow Times - The heads of Gazprom and ConocoPhillips met in Moscow on Tuesday to discuss liquefied natural gas projects and Alaskan offshore exploration. "Gazprom's experience could be useful in realizing new gas projects in the United States," chief executive Alexei Miller said after holding talks with James Mulva, his counterpart at ConocoPhillips. Both companies met in Alaska in October to discuss broad-based business opportunities in the most northerly U.S. state. Gazprom passed over ConocoPhillips when it was choosing partners to develop the Shtokman gas project in 2007. Miller said in June that Gazprom had approached ConocoPhillips and BP on joining their Denali pipeline project, which was designed to deliver Alaskan gas to the continental United States. At the same time, Gazprom expressed interest in a rival pipeline project backed by TransCanada. Gazprom has said it is considering whether to invite international companies, including ConocoPhillips, to examine LNG projects on Yamal peninsula. nGazprom estimates its end-2008 reserves at 217.3 billion barrels of oil equivalent, the company said in a memo to its eurobond issue. That is broadly in line with analyst estimates and represents an increase of 11 percent from 2007, when its reserves were 196.4 billion. "We estimate that we had Russian reserves classification ABC reserves of 33.1 trillion cubic meters of natural gas, 1,286.8 million tons of gas condensate and 1,598.4 million tons of crude oil," the document said.