Gazprom Deputy CEO Valery Golubev promises to invest up to 1 trillion ruble in development this year.
Photo: Dmitry Dukhanin
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Gazprom to Earth A Trillion Ruble
Russia’s gas monopoly Gazprom plans to inject the record 1 trillion ruble in new projects of production and transportation. This move could be viewed as the monopoly’s response to accusations of the European Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs, who criticized Gazprom for insufficient investing in this field. The news emerged in time of the crucial decline in Gazprom capitalization and drove up its stocks by 1.4 percent to 1.6 percent yesterday.
Gazprom BOD will again go through this year’s investment program in September, Valery Golubev, who is the deputy chairman of monopoly’s management committee, announced Thursday during the gasification meeting in the Leningrad region. “The adjusted 2008 investment program hasn’t been sanctioned, but it has been elaborated and will be considered in September,” Golubev explained to Interfax, specifying that the growth will be “significant, by roughly 25 percent.”
Golubev attributed record investments to the increase in gas sales as well as to the advantageous prices on the market. The supplies of Russia’s gas to Western Europe stepped up 22 percent on year to 65 billion cu meters in the first half of this year. The prices rose from $345/ths cu meters to $410/ths cu meters over the period.
The current adjustment is the second upgrade of monopoly’s program this year. In December of 2007, Gazprom sanctioned 2008 investment program of 710 billion ruble, but the oil prices continued their global advance and the worth of H1 sales manifested material growth by the end of the first quarter, inspiring the monopoly to appropriate above 820 billion ruble for production and delivery projects.
But that amount didn’t suffice. Gazprom stepped up its gas unconsolidated earnings by 47 percent to 1.013 trillion ruble in the first half of this year and is willing to invest exactly this amount in the infrastructural projects.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Aug. 22, 2008
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