OREANDA-NEWS. May 19, 2010. The Board of Directors reviewed the Shtokman field development status and took notice of the information on two-stage adoption of the final investment decision (FID) on the Shtokman project, Phase 1.

The Gazprom Management Committee was tasked to continue the FID preparation with due regard for the pipeline and liquefied natural gas sales in the current market environment.

The Board of Directors meeting to be held on May 21 will tackle the issues concerned with the conduct of Gazprom’s annual General Shareholders Meeting.
Background

The Shtokman field is situated in the central part of the Russian sector of the Barents Sea.

The field’s C1 reserves make up 3.9 trillion cubic meters of gas and 56.1 million tons of gas condensate, with 3.8 trillion cubic meters of gas and 53.4 million tons of gas condensate located within Gazprom’s license area.

The Shtokman gas and condensate field development project is of strategic importance for Gazprom. The field will become a resource base for Russian gas delivery – both by pipeline and in the form of LNG – to the Atlantic basin markets.

Gazprom neft shelf (former Sevmorneftegaz), a wholly owned subsidiary of Gazprom, holds the gas and gas condensate exploration and production license for the Shtokman field.

Gazprom partners with Total (France) and Statoil (Norway) in the Shtokman project execution.

In February 2008 Gazprom, Total and StatoilHydro signed the Shareholder Agreement on establishing Shtokman Development AG, a special-purpose company to engineer, develop, construct, finance and operate the Phase 1 facilities intended for the Shtokman field development.

The special-purpose company will own the Phase 1 infrastructure of the Shtokman field for 25 years, starting from the field commissioning date.

On February 5, 2010, taking into account the market changes, particularly on the LNG market, the Shtokman Development AG  Board of Directors decided to single out construction of the Startup Complex for Pipeline Gas Supply into a separate stage within Phase 1.

The final investment decision on pipeline gas production is planned to be taken in March 2011 and the decision on LNG production – before the end of 2011, at the next stage. Such an approach will enable launching pipeline gas and LNG production in 2016  and 2017, accordingly.