OREANDA-NEWS. March 29, 2012. Transcript of the beginning of the meeting:

Vladimir Putin: Gentlemen, esteemed colleagues, I am very glad to see you. The relations between us are good and of long standing. Your companies have been working in Russia very successfully for a long time. I hope that you will also succeed in the large projects we are going to discuss today. Let us take one more step in promoting our cooperation — in the field of oil and gas production.

We have ever more opportunities together with our Norwegian partners. I am referring to delimitation agreement in the North. The decisions taken at the political level should proceed to the stage of commercial implementation. I believe that we can agree on our joint work in the North, where your company has very good experience, advanced technology and a high level of competence. I hope that we will find the right projects and decisions at the corporate level and at the level of the relevant government agencies to allow us to keep moving forward.

We have many other reliable partners apart from Statoil, in particular Total, which is working together with Russia’s largest public and private companies. And their plans for Russia are indeed on a very ambitious scale.

Today I would like to talk about our joint plans to develop the Shtokman gas deposit, and we could also possibly discuss the Kharyaga oilfield, where we expect to increase production. We can also talk about possible joint projects with Statoil, here there are a number of options in different areas.

So, I am glad to see you. I am completely at your disposal. Mr Sechin (Igor Sechin, Deputy Prime Minister)?

Igor Sechin: I am also glad to welcome our colleagues here. StatoilHydro and Total are well known in Russia; they are actively involved in the implementation of joint projects and have the necessary expertise. I hope that we will work together on many more joint projects and that they will be even bigger than the current ones. There are grounds to believe that this is possible.

The Shtokman gas condensate deposit is unique and we are pleased that Gazprom has teamed up with the kind of well-known companies that are competent to carry out this work. Shtokman’s proven reserves comprise 3.8 trillion cubic metres of gas and 37 million tonnes of gas condensate. This is a reliable foundation for implementing the project.

There are other joint projects too. For example, we hope that our partners will make every effort to increase production at the Kharyaga oilfield in accordance with our agreements.

We also hope that Total and Statoil will come to an agreement on a number of interesting projects that can be implemented jointly.

Vladimir Putin: As you know, we have taken several tax decisions at the federal and regional levels. The Murmansk authorities have also adopted decisions that will create favourable conditions for implementing the Shtokman project.