Porto Cervo (Italy) hosted today the opening of the 12th Annual General Assembly of the European Business Congress (EBC). The Assembly brings together the representatives of around 250 companies and organizations from 23 OSCE member states. A Gazprom delegation is headed by Alexey Miller, the Company’s Management Committee Chairman, EBC President.

Within the EBC General Assembly a conference on “Energy Sector: Financial Markets Crisis and its Impact on Investments and Energy Supply-Demand Balance” was held. Speaking at the conference were Alexey Miller, Management Committee Chairman and Andrey Kruglov, Finance and Economics Department Head, Gazprom.

Leonid Grigoriev, President of the Institute of Energy and Finance also delivered a speech. He pointed out that “the crisis is gaining momentum. The investment flows from developed countries to the developing ones have almost come to a halt, and capital investments have sharply declined in the USA and Europe. This provokes a threat of retreating to the vicious price spiral when the crisis causes a shortage of investments, and by the recovery start-up there is a lack of energy leading to a price hike. Such cases already happened.

If we want to avoid such violent fluctuations and achieve stability of investment planning, we have to rely on two important components. First of all, we have to establish stable oil prices. This would entail stability and predictability of gas prices in the EU and would make it possible to perform extended economic planning in all sectors. Secondly, we have to make investments under the crisis: if we want to eliminate wild price fluctuations we should pay great attention to the investments in production and infrastructure”.

During the 12th EBC Annual Assembly Alexey Miller met with Andrew Gould, Board of Directors Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Schlumberger, Dimitrios Copelouzos, Managing Director of Prometheus Gas S.A. and Marcel Kramer, Executive Board Chairman and CEO of Gasunie.

On June 11, the following Working Groups will hold their sessions: Law, Banking and Finance headed by Andrey Kruglov, Industry and Construction headed by Oleg Aksyutin, Management Committee Member – Gas Transportation, Underground Storage and Utilization Department Head of Gazprom, and Business Security headed by Sergey Khomyakov, Deputy Chairman of Gazprom Management Committee.

Background:

The European Business Congress (EBC) comprises 117 companies from 23 OSCE member states including such prominent corporations and banks as Gazprom, ExxonMobil, Daimler Chrysler, Siemens, Shell, ConocoPhillips, Total, Deutsche Bank, Dresdner Bank, Alcatel, Wintershall, E.ON Ruhrgas, GDF SUEZ and others. The EBC Secretariat is headquartered in Berlin. EBC publishes its bulletin in English and Russian on a quarterly basis.

EBC supreme body is the General Meeting. The 35-member Presiding Committee exercises general management. The EBC President is Alexey Miller, Chairman of Gazprom Management Committee. The 9-member Board of Executive Directors is responsible for executive management.

EBC deals with economic cooperation issues in Europe and brings forward proposals on eliminating bottlenecks and building a safe and favorable environment for entrepreneurial activities. EBC operates through seven Working Committees for: Energy; Industry and Construction; Law, Banking and Finance; Information and Communications; Ecology and Healthcare; Human Resources, Education and Science; Business Security.