OREANDA-NEWS. A working meeting between Alexey Miller, Chairman of the Gazprom Management Committee and Sergey Frank, Director General of Sovcomflot took place today within the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum 2015.

The parties addressed the current status and prospects for further cooperation in arranging marine shipping of LNG and oil as well as in offshore geological exploration. The success of the cooperation was highlighted within a number of large projects, such as Prirazlomnoye and Novoportovskoye.

Alexey Miller and Sergey Frank expressed confidence that the strategic cooperation between Gazprom and Sovcomflot would be continued.

Gazprom Group charted for a long-term period the following tankers of Sovcomflot: Velikiy Novgorod and Pskov are used for LNG transportation, Kirill Lavrov and Mikhail Ulyanov are engaged in the transportation of oil at the Prirazlomnoye field.

In 2012 the cooperation between the companies resulted in the first shipment of Gazprom’s hydrocarbons via the Northern Sea Route (NSR). The delivery of energy resources to Asia-Pacific markets is significantly faster via the NSR than via the traditional route across the Suez Canal, thus making that delivery method much more cost-effective.

Sovcomflot is a largest Russian shipping company focused on oil, oil products and LNG transportation; a leading tanker operator worldwide.