OREANDA-NEWS. October 17, 2008. The Gazprom Headquarters hosted today a meeting of the Coordinating Committee for Environmental Protection. The meeting was moderated by Alexander Ananenkov, Deputy Chairman of the Company’s Management Committee, Head of the Coordinating Committee.

Participating in the meeting were heads and experts of the Gazprom Administration core business units, as well as representatives of the Company’s subsidiaries – Gazprom dobycha Nadym, Sevmorneftegaz, VNIPIgazdobycha, Piter gaz and Nord Stream AG.

The meeting discussed sets of operations aimed at securing environmental safety, while developing the Bovanenkovo and Prirazlomnoye fields and constructing the Nord Stream gas pipeline. It was emphasized that all the necessary measures would be taken to protect the environment, to prevent and mitigate the possible impact on the ecosystem during the construction and operation works in the frames of the projects implementation.

In particular, technical solutions are applied for the Bovanenkovo oil and gas condensate field development, enabling to reduce the land withdrawn areas with their potential technical and biological recultivation. The current environmental activities rule out discharge of household sewage and industrial waste water into the soil and water reservoirs, execution of construction and installation activities during a spring nesting season of birds, at the same time providing for water intakes through fish protection systems. To allow an unobstructed migration of reindeer herds the development project envisages installation of passages across line pipe facilities; the placement and the design of the said passages have been previously agreed upon with deer farmers. Besides, environmental monitoring was arranged for the periods of construction and operation.

The Prirazlomnoye oil field development project was elaborated with due regard of the Pechora Sea natural and climatic conditions detected during many years of observations, as well as of the results of geotechnical and engineering-ecological researches. The project, inter alia, provides for the ultimate recycling of produced wastes and a prohibition of the disposal of drilling wastes and uncleansed sewages into sea waters. Additionally, the project envisages development of an oil spill prevention and elimination system in the open sea, on ice, under ice and in the onshore area, as well as development of an industrial and environmental control and monitoring system.

Within the Nord Stream gas pipeline construction project, investigations of possible impact on the on the Baltic Sea ecosystem were carried out and the areas of chemical weapons dumping were inspected. The received results were considered when engineering the gas pipeline. Given the international status of the project, the environmental impact assessment is carried out in compliance with the ESPO Convention provisions – twelve international consultations were arranged with representatives of state bodies from the affected countries. During the meeting a special attention was paid to the need of no less than 95 per cent utilization of associated petroleum gas while developing the Bovanenkovo oil and gas condensate field and the Prirazlomnoye oil field. During gas and gas condensate field development, design institutes should foresee utilization of gas as motor fuels in the frontier settlements.

Based on the meeting results Gazprom’s core business units and subsidiaries were engaged with the assignments targeted at the execution of the scheduled sets of environmental operations.