OREANDA-NEWS. June 08, 2015. The Gazprom headquarters hosted today a meeting between Alexey Miller, Chairman of the Gazprom Management Committee and Rainer Seele, Chairman of the Board of Executive Directors of Wintershall Holding, who would occupy the post of the Chairman of the Executive Board and CEO of OMV starting from July 1, 2015.

The meeting highlighted that Gazprom and Wintershall had a history of successful cooperation within a number of key projects, which ultimately had a positive impact on the gas industry evolution as well as enhanced the reliability of Russian gas supplies to Europe. In particular, the companies are jointly developing the Yuzhno-Russkoye field and the Achimov deposits of the Urengoyskoye field; the Nord Stream gas pipeline has been built and nowadays is fully operational. Gazprom and Wintershall work together in gas sales and storage across Europe and jointly support art projects.

Alexey Miller wished the best of luck to Rainer Seele on taking over new responsibilities and expressed his confidence that Rainer Seele would do a lot to strengthen the ties between Russia and Europe.

Background

A wholly-owned subsidiary of BASF, Wintershall Holding (Germany) has been focused on oil and gas exploration and production for over 80 years.

OMV is Gazprom's major business partner in Austria. The company runs the businesses of hydrocarbon exploration, production, processing, transmission and sales.

The Yuzhno-Russkoye oil and gas field is situated in the Krasnoselkupsky District, Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Area. ABC1+C2 natural gas reserves of the field exceed 1 trillion cubic meters.

Achimgaz, established on a par by Gazprom and Wintershall Holding, develops 1A block of the Achimov deposits in the Urengoy field.

Nord Stream is a 1,224-kilometer two-string export gas pipeline with the annual capacity of 55 billion cubic meters of gas running under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany. Nord Stream is operated by the Nord Stream joint venture (Gazprom owns a 51 per cent stake, Wintershall Holding and E.ON Global Commodities – 15.5 per cent each, Gasunie and ENGIE – 9 per cent each).