OREANDA-NEWS. In Moscow Vagit Alekperov, President of OAO LUKOIL, and Aleksander Dyukov, Acting President of OAO Gazprom Neft, signed a Memorandum of Understanding between the companies.

Inter alia, the parties agreed upon joint implementation of oil and gas projects in the Russian Federation, which would cover the following: acquisition of rights related to subsoil use; geological study of jointly acquired reserves; exploration and production of hydrocarbons at jointly acquired fields; field construction, implementation of infrastructure projects, including construction of new and/or improvement of existing infrastructure facilities; transportation and marketing of produced hydrocarbons.

To accomplish this, OAO LUKOIL and OAO Gazprom Neft intend to establish a joint venture in the form of a limited liability company, which is going to hold licenses for the relevant license areas.

The parties will have the following interest in the charter capital of the Joint Venture: OAO LUKOIL will account for 49%, OAO Gazprom Neft will own 51%. The JV is to be managed on a parity basis.