St. Petersburghosted today a working meeting between Alexey Miller, Chairman of the Gazprom Management Committee and Ian Taylor, President of Vitol Group.

The parties addressed the issues of bilateral cooperation. Special attention was paid to further development of Gazprom's underground gas storage business in Europe as well as cooperation prospects in gas-fired power generation, particularly, in the UK and France. The meeting noted that Europe saw a steadily growing demand for Russian natural gas and highlighted the urgency of building up gas storage capacities in proximity to European consumers.

The parties outlined specific steps aimed at developing joint activities in the power generation sector based on Russian natural gas.

Background

The Swiss-Dutch company Vitol is the world's second oil trader. The company's scope of activities also includes natural gas trading, hydrocarbons transmission and storage, power generation.

Agreements on Gazprom's natural gas storage in the European UGS facilities are concluded between Gazprom and Vitol.