After a series of constructive meetings during the past few weeks, RWE and Gazprom have agreed to continue their talks on a possible joint venture.

Alexey Miller, Chairman of the Gazprom Management Committee and Jurgen Grossmann, Chief Executive Officer of RWE AG agreed on this at a working meeting held at the beginning of this week in The Hague (the Netherlands).

The exclusive talks on setting up the joint venture to be comprised of existing and/or new-build gas- and coal-fired power plants in Germany, the United Kingdom and the Benelux countries will be carried on until the end of 2011.

Background

RWE is a leading German company in the field of power and natural gas production and marketing.

At present, natural gas reserves of RWE amount to 179.4 billion cubic meters. In 2010 the company produced 2.7 billion cubic meters and sold 38.4 billion cubic meters of gas.

On July 14 Gazprom and RWE signed the Memorandum of Understanding on strategic partnership in power generation in Europe.