The Gazprom headquarters hosted today a working meeting between Alexey Miller, Chairman of the Company’s Management Committee and Sheikh Hamad Bin Jassem Bin Jabor Al Thani, Prime Minister and Foreign Affairs Minister of the State of Qatar.

On behalf of Qatar the meeting was also attended by Mohamed Saleh Al-Sada, State Minister for Energy and Industrial Affairs, Ali Bin Fetais Al-Marri, Attorney General of the State of Qatar and Nasser Al-Jaidah, Chief Executive Officer of Qatar Petroleum. The Russian party was represented by Alexander Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the Gazprom Management Committee and Boris Ivanov, Director General of Gazprom EP International B.V.

The delegation visited the Central Production and Dispatch Department and got acquainted with the unique capabilities of Russia’s Unified Gas Supply System enabling to respond flexibly to gas demand fluctuations throughout the European continent and to take immediate decisions on gas production and transmission modes. The visitors were informed on the plans to expand the System in the eastern region.

The meeting participants discussed the promising areas of interaction between Gazprom and Qatar Petroleum in the oil and gas sector. The parties appreciated the high potential of cooperation in LNG transactions and LNG/pipeline gas swap deals on the European and Asia-Pacific markets.

The Qatari party expressed interest in the projects for the Yamal Peninsula comprehensive development and, in particular, in the Yamal-LNG project.

The meeting addressed the issues of interaction within the Gas Exporting Countries Forum. An emphasis was placed on the shared opinions regarding the establishment of a sustainable and transparent gas market, as well as improving energy security on the global level.

Background:

The State of Qatar is the world’s third largest country in terms of natural gas reserves after Russia and Iran. The country’s proven reserves account for 25.8 trillion cubic meters.

Indigenous gas production in Qatar is increasing rapidly: from 5.8 billion cubic meters in 1988 to the present 77 billion cubic meters. All natural gas in Qatar is produced from the North field located on the continental shelf close to the Iranian border.

Qatar annually exports 56.8 billion cubic meters of natural gas. The bulk of gas is exported as LNG (around 39.6 billion cubic meters). The country has 5 operating projects on LNG production and another 2 projects are nearing completion. The aggregate annual capacity of LNG plants accounted for 84.3 billion cubic meters by late 2009.

Qatar Petroleum is the state monopoly in the oil and gas sector of Qatar.

The Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) was set up in 2001 in Teheran. The Forum was transformed into an international organization and was assigned the relevant legal status at the 7th GECF Ministerial Meeting of December 2008 held in Moscow. The GECF is headquartered in Doha (Qatar). At the 9th GECF Ministerial Meeting of December 2009, Leonid Bohanovsky, a representative from the Russian Federation, was elected the Forum’s Secretary General. Nowadays, the Forum’s participants are Algeria, Venezuela, Egypt, Iran, Qatar, Libya, Nigeria, Russia, Trinidad & Tobago, as well as Norway and Kazakhstan as observers.

Gazprom EP International B.V., a 100 per cent subsidiary of Gazprom, manages the Company’s international assets in hydrocarbons exploration and production.