A working meeting between Alexander Ananenkov, Acting Gazprom's Management Committee Chairman and Dilma Rousseff, Brazil's Mines and Energy Minister, was held today at Gazprom's Headquarters.

The parties deliberated on the possibility of building up cooperation in the gas business, due to Brazil's plans to develop its domestic gas market. The national Brazilian oil and gas company Petrobras was identified by D. Rousseff as a hypothetical counterpart of Gazprom in this business.

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Brazil follows Venezuela in possessing the largest hydrocarbon reserves in Latin America. A new 400-bcm gas field recently discovered near Sao Paulo has built up Brazil's natural gas reserves from 230 bcm (0.1% of the global gas reserves) to 630 bcm. After bringing this field into operation, Brazil will be able to produce some 29 bcm of gas per annum.

At present, Brazil annually consumes some 13 bcm of gas, including 4 bcm imported from Bolivia and 500 million cubic meters, from Argentina.

In June 2003, the Brazilian Government drafted a project on the domestic gas transmission infrastructure development. The project aims at delivering gas (imported from abroad, inclusive) to Brazilian southeast and northeast regions.

Liquefaction of natural gas extracted from the Upper Amazon fields and LNG deliveries by river class methane carriers to end-use consumers are looked upon as a promising way of developing the Brazilian gas market.

Brazil's leading state oil and gas company is Petrobras possessing state-of-the-art oil and natural gas production technologies.

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