OREANDA-NEWS. April 1, 2009. The Board of Directors’ meeting is in progress at the Gazprom Headquarters.

The Board of Directors took notice of the information on Gazprom’s activities aimed at developing and introducing gas and energy saving technologies as well as on their impact on the Russian fuel and energy balance optimization.

The Management Committee was tasked to further work in this direction.

Background:

Natural gas exceeds 51 per cent in the total fuel and energy balance of Russia.

There are serious obstacles in the country, hampering full-fledged realization of the existing energy and gas saving potential. These particularly include a lack of motivation for energy saving; the absence of a pricing, tax and customs policy encouraging energy saving; the inefficiency of regulatory and legal framework and, as a consequence, the insufficiency of the investment inflow in energy saving projects.

To a certain extent the situation should be redressed through the Law “On energy saving and energy efficiency raising” adopted by the State Duma of the Russian Federation in the first reading. The draft Law stipulates measures for administrative and economic encouragement of energy saving as well as support to energy saving actions. Gas saving projects are identified in the document as a priority.

At present, Gazprom is implementing the corporate Energy Saving Program for 2007 through 2010, which will allow saving in the order of 11 million tons of fuel equivalent including 10.4 billion cubic meters of natural gas, some 1.3 billion kWh of electric energy, 1.2 million Gkal of thermal energy and 30 thousand tons of fuel equivalent of diesel and boiler-furnace fuel.

In 2008 the plan of gas saving as part of the Program was implemented 116 per cent resulting in more than 2.3 billion cubic meters of saved gas.