OREANDA-NEWS  On 03 December NOVATEK (or the “Company”) reported hydrocarbon production data for the month of October 2008 and the ten months ended 31 October 2008.

Gross production for October 2008 totalled 2.76 billion cubic meters of natural gas and 264 thousand tons of liquids (gas condensate and crude oil). Natural gas production increased by 11.5%, and gross liquids production increased by 22.5%, as compared with the corresponding gross production in October 2007.
 
In the first ten months of 2008, gross production for NOVATEK totalled 25.59 billion cubic meters of natural gas and 2.14 million tons of liquids. Natural gas production increased by 9.4%, whereas gross liquids production increased by 4.1% as compared with the corresponding gross production in the first ten months of 2007.
 
With the successful launches of the second phase development at the Yurkharovskoye field in September 2008 and the second phase expansion of the Purovsky processing plant in November 2008, the Company completed the majority of the infrastructure related activities required to increase production capacity and continue field development. The Company’s current production capacity is more than 100 million cubic meters of natural gas per day.
 
“We update our future development plans with accordance to the gas demand outlook,” stated Leonid V. Mikhelson, CEO NOVATEK. “As a result of the signs of a slowdown in expected consumption of natural gas primarily due to unseasonably warm fall weather, management is revising its full year natural gas production growth guidance to 8.5% and maintains its 10% liquids production growth guidance for 2008”.
 
According to NOVATEK’s CFO, Mark Gyetvay, “The Company has not been negatively impacted by non-payments for deliveries of natural gas and continues to work closely with its customer base and OAO Gazprom to ensure adequate supplies of natural gas are available on the Russian domestic market”.