StatoilHydro CEO Helge Lund, left, and Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller, right, shake hands after inking the framework cooperation agreement for Shtokman.
Photo: Grigoriy Sobchenko
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The Shelf Broke Up
Discouraged, perhaps, by the fruitless missile defense negotiations with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has finally chosen Gazprom’s second and last partner to develop the Shtokman field in the Barents Sea, and U.S. ConocoPhillips isn’t the lucky one. Similar to the agreement with French Total, Gazprom’s agreement with Norway’s StatoilHydro resulted from the telephone conversation of Vladimir Putin. This time, his interlocutor was Norway’s Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg.
President’s news service announced yesterday the name of the second foreign partner of Gazprom to develop one of the world’s ten biggest fields, the Shtokman field of gas condensate with reserves of 3.7 trillion cu meters of gas. Norway’s StatoilHydro has become Gazprom’s partner in addition to French Total. Unlike Total, which choice was rather unexpected but which was granted a blocking stake in the project, StatoilHydro will have to confine to just 24 percent.
Of interest is that the capitalization of Statoil and Hydro was the smallest of five challengers that advanced to the 2005 short list. So Norway’s government had to step in to consolidate Statoil (the state-run stake was 76.3 percent) and Hydro (43.8 percent), initiating creation of company with the government’s ownership of 62.5 percent. Nevertheless, the efforts of Norway to approach the Shtokman shelf weren’t particularly successful until recently.
Putin evidently made his choice in the wake of abortive negotiations with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates held in Moscow in mid.-October. Straight after the talks, Rice announced the need to rush to implement a plan to site elements of the missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic. Putin’s profound disappointment about the U.S. standing on the issue was clearly felt by observers in Washington, when they were watching his televised question-and-answer session with the nation on October 18.
”By choosing StatoilHydro, President Putin has manifested the balanced approach, as the first participant represents interests of importers, i.e. the EU, and the second – the exporters,” said East European Gas Analysis Director Mikhail Korchemkin. The news on the partner’s choice fueled Gazprom quotes by 1 percent and StatoilHydro surged 3.08 percent.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Oct. 26, 2007
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