Pursuant to the decision by the Gazprom Board of Directors, an order was signed to open the Company's representative office in the city of Doha, State of Qatar.

The representative office will pursue the primary objective of developing long-term mutually beneficial economic cooperation of Gazprom with the Persian Gulf states as well as representing and protecting the Company's interests in the region.

The representative office activities will be focused on interaction with government authorities and petroleum companies from Qatar and the Persian Gulf states, coordination of the efforts by Gazprom's companies in the regional energy markets and cooperation with the Gas Exporting Countries Forum.

Background

The State of Qatar is the world's third largest country in terms of natural gas reserves after Russia and Iran. The country's proven reserves amount to 25.8 trillion cubic meters.

In 2010 Qatar exported around 75 billion cubic meters of natural gas. The bulk of the gas is exported in the form of LNG (some 50 billion cubic meters). Qatar Petroleum is the state monopoly in the Qatari petroleum industry.

The Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) was established in 2001 in Teheran. The Forum was transformed into an international organization and was assigned the relevant legal status at the 7th GECF Ministerial Meeting of December 2008 held in Moscow. The GECF is headquartered in Doha (Qatar).

In December 2009 the Russian Federation representative Leonid Bokhanovsky was elected as Secretary General of the Forum. Nowadays, the Forum participants are Algeria, Bolivia, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Iran, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Russia, Trinidad & Tobago, Venezuela as well as Kazakhstan and Norway as observers.