A working meeting was held today at the Gazprom headquarters. Participating in the meeting were Alexey Miller, Chairman of the Management Committee of Gazprom, Helge Lund, President and Chief Executive Officer of Statoil and Christophe de Margerie, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Total SA.

The meeting addressed the progress with the Shtokman project and placed an emphasis on the optimization of technologies used for the project Phase 1 with a view to raise its cost efficiency.

The parties highlighted that it was important to execute the project within the specified timeframe and expressed their determination to continue its intense implementation.

Background

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

C1 reserves of the field make up 3.9 trillion cubic meters of gas and 56 million tons of gas condensate, with 3.8 trillion cubic meters of gas and 53.4 million tons of gas condensate located within Gazprom's licensed area.

The Shtokman gas and condensate field development project is of strategic importance for Gazprom. The project implementation will give a start to a new gas production region in the Arctic shelf of Russia.

The Shtokman field will become a resource base for building up deliveries of Russian gas both by pipeline and in the form of LNG (liquefied natural gas) to domestic and foreign market.

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.

Gazprom partners Total (France) and Statoil (Norway) in the Shtokman project execution.

In February 2008 Gazprom, Total and Statoil (StatoilHydro then) signed the Shareholder Agreement on establishing Shtokman Development AG, a special-purpose company to engineer, design, construct, finance and operate Phase 1 facilities intended for the Shtokman field development.

Shtokman Development AG will own Shtokman Phase 1 infrastructure for 25 years, starting from the date on which the field is brought onstream.