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Gazprom could use Norway's help in Shtokman gas field: minister
AFP
BRUSSELS
Petroleumworld.com 10 11 06
Norway respects Russia's right to develop the massive Shtokman gas field alone but Moscow could benefit from Norway's help, the Scandinavian country's foreign minister said Tuesday.
"The Norwegian experience, technologically, industrially and managerially could benefit Russia in its quest for developing resources in the Barents Sea," Jonas Gahr Stoere said in Brussels.
Russian energy giant Gazprom stunned investors Monday by saying it would develop the gas field -- one of the world's biggest -- without foreign partners and reorient the project towards Europe rather than the United States.
The field in Barents Sea, which is a part of the Arctic Ocean located north of Norway and Russia, "has the potential to tranform our relations with Russia," said Stoere.
"President Putin has called for a strategic energy partneship with Norway. It remains to decide what shape such a partnership will take," he told a conference by the European Policy Centre think-tank.
"It will take effort and goodwill, innovative approaches and predictable policy on both sides to develop such a partnership," the Norwegian foreign minister said.
After months of speculation over which foreign partner would be chosen to develop the Shtokman field, Gazprom said none of the offers it had received came up to scratch.
It had pre-selected five companies as potential partners: two from Norway -- Statoil and Norsk Hydro, France's Total, and ConocoPhillips and ChevronTexaco of the United States.
The Shtokman field has proven reserves of 3,500 billion cubic metres of gas -- equivalent to more than seven times the annual gas consumption of the European Union in 2004 -- and the 40-year project is planned to start in 2010.
Russia, which has the world's biggest gas reserves, accounts for about 25 percent of the European Union's gas consumption.
AFP 10 1620 GMT 10 06
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