Yesterday Alexey Miller, Chairman of the Gazprom Management Committee held at the Company’s Headquarters a meeting on the Shtokman gas and condensate field development.

The meeting was attended by heads and experts from the Gazprom Administration subdivisions, subsidiaries, corporate research and design institutes and Shtokman Development AG.

The meeting participants addressed the Shtokman project progress placing an emphasis on technology optimization within phase one of the Shtokman development for the purpose of raising the economic efficiency and assuring navigation safety of heavy-duty LNG carriers.

Based on the meeting results the decision was taken to position LNG offloading terminals in the northern part of the Orlovka Bay. The project operator will rely on this decision when planning its further activities.

Background:

The Shtokman field is situated in the central part of the Russian sector in the Barents Sea.

The field’s C1 reserves make up 3.8 trillion cubic meters of gas and 53.3 million tons of gas condensate.

The Shtokman gas and condensate field development project is of strategic importance for Gazprom. The field will be a resource base for deliveries of Russian gas – both pipeline and LNG – to the Atlantic Basin markets.

Gazprom neft shelf (former Sevmorneftegaz), a wholly owned subsidiary of Gazprom, holds the gas and gas condensate exploration and production license for the Shtokman field.

Total (France) and StatoilHydro (Norway) partner with Gazprom in the Shtokman project.

In February 2008 Gazprom, Total and StatoilHydro signed the Shareholder Agreement on establishing Shtokman Development AG, a special-purpose company, to design, engineer, develop, construct, finance and operate phase one facilities intended for the Shtokman field development.

The special-purpose company will own the infrastructure of phase one of the Shtokman field for 25 years, starting from the field commissioning date.

In 2008 the Vyborg Shipbuilding Plant launched the construction of two semi-submersible drilling rigs to drill production wells in the Shtokman field.

Designed for operation in the severe climatic conditions of the Extreme North, the Polyarnaya Zvezda and Severnoye Siyanie platforms can resist the waves up to 32 meters high and perform exploratory and production drilling of gas and oil wells reaching 7,500 meters at water depth of 70–500 meters.

The first semi-submersible drilling rig is to be constructed in the fourth quarter of 2010, the second one – in the first quarter of 2011.