OREANDA-NEWS. The Board of Directors of OJSC “Gazprom” approved the progress recorded in 2006 with the implementation of the Gasification Program for RF Regions over 2005 to 2007.

The Board ordered to include in Gazprom’s 2007 budget not less than RUR 20.2 billion (RUR 8 billion up on previous projections) for the Program implementation purposes.

Increased investments will enable to include in the Program 5 more RF constituents such as: the Irkutsk Oblast, Altai Republic, Dagestan, Karelia and Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug.

If the Gasification Program is successful, a further 13 million citizens of Russia will become natural gas consumers by as early as year-end 2007.

In 2006 Gazprom financed the construction of 122 (versus 93 as previously scheduled) local gas pipelines with a total length of 1,313 km, which enabled to gasify 147 population centres, 410 thousand apartments and households including 180 thousand in cities & towns and 227 thousand in rural area.

In addition, some 2 thousand residential institutions (hospitals, schools, kindergartens, etc.), 576 rural heating boilers and over 50 agricultural companies have been converted to natural gas.

This year Gazprom has fully complied with its commitments under said schedules.