The Gazprom Board of Directors approved the Company's activities aimed at boosting the efficiency of associated petroleum gas (APG) utilization in Russia.

The meeting emphasized that APG utilization growth was one of Gazprom's priorities, which fully complied with global trends towards low-carbon and energy efficient economic development. The Company displays a stable growth of this parameter. Over the last four years APG useful utilization has increased by 11 per cent up to 70 per cent.

Associated petroleum gas is a valuable resource providing for additional profit through the utilization in power industry, gas processing, gas chemistry and oil production. In its turn, it opens up the prospects of mutually beneficial cooperation between Gazprom and independent producers.

The Company established a permanent working group coordinating the interaction of Gazprom with oil companies while developing and subsequently implementing joint projects aimed at extraction, treatment and transportation of associated petroleum gas and natural gas from the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Area. In cooperation with LUKOIL the project is being developed on processing at the Sosnogorsk GPP the associated petroleum gas from the Komi Republic. The Power of Siberia gas trunkline system being built by Gazprom will allow, inter alia, receiving APG from the Irkutsk Region and the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) fields owned by third-party subsurface users.

Measures of state control over APG utilization encourage Russian companies to raise their investments. The total volume of APG useful utilization will increase steadily in Russia. For example, the expected supply volume of dry stripped gas recovered as a result of APG processing from independent producers to Gazprom's gas transmission system in 2013 will grow from 20.9 to 22.3 billion cubic meters (6.7 per cent growth versus 2012).

In this context, Gazprom is elaborating an action plan aimed at synchronizing the efforts with independent APG suppliers in order to boost the efficiency of its utilization.