OREANDA-NEWS.   The Gazprom Board of Directors approved the report on the progress in 2013 with Gazprom's Innovative Development Program until 2020.

Gazprom Group goes on allotting considerable funds for R&D financing. In 2013 the Company committed some RUB 6.8 billion for these purposes. Gazprom is one of the leading Russian investors into innovations.

More than a half of these funds were channeled to priority engineering projects. Thus, the solutions for obtaining helium concentrate using membrane-cryogenic technologies were devised, which made it possible to lower power consumption while recovering the concentrate in comparison with the conventional cryogenic technology. The Kovyktinskoye field development plan was being made, the work was underway to create the commercial technology of GTL production from natural gas.

Gazprom continued increasing the share of domestically manufactured hi-tech equipment in its procurement sector, as well as on replacing foreign machine-building equipment with its Russian counterparts. In particular, the Company was engaged in executing the Roadmaps signed with the Voronezh, Omsk and Tomsk Regions to help local plants master promising technologies and equipment appealing to Gazprom. Jointly with the Gas Compressor Equipment Manufacturers Association the Company implemented the project for creating a 16 MW unified gas compressor unit (GCU). This solution makes it possible to reduce the expenditures and project timelines, raise the effectiveness of GCU maintenance and repairs. Gazprom successfully replaces foreign counterparts by Russian corrosion-resistant subsurface equipment for oil and gas flush production.

The meeting pointed out that the Program was being executed with a high degree of efficiency; in 2013 it provided for fuel and energy conservation: their specific consumption for auxiliary needs dropped by 2.52 per cent. Specific greenhouse emissions in the CO2 equivalent were reduced by 4.25 per cent.

Gazprom continued the cooperation with RUSNANO within its innovative development initiatives. In particular, the companies jointly introduced anticorrosion nanocoatings at the Astrakhan GPP facilities as well as tested thermoelectric generators and lithium-ion accumulator powered DC systems.

Cooperation went on with 11 international energy leaders. In 2013 Sci-Tech Cooperation Programs, which included, inter alia, 13 projects were signed with five of them.

Interaction was underway with nine higher education institutions supported by the Company: cooperation agreements were signed to form the basis of three-year R&D programs. In addition, joint programs for improving the quality of education and personnel training were successfully executed.

The work went on for improving the IP management system as well as the standardization system.

In addition, the Board of Directors approved the remuneration for PricewaterhouseCoopers Audit for auditing Gazprom's Accounting (Financial) Statements as well as the IFRS consolidated financial statements of Gazprom Group for 2014.

Background

The Gazprom Innovative Development Program until 2020 was approved by the Company's Board of Directors in June 2011.
The Program is mainly aimed at consistently improving Gazprom's technology level in order to maintain its position of the technological leader in the global energy sector.