Today, at Gazprom’s Headquarters, Alexey Miller, Gazprom’s Management Committee Chairman, Dr. Wulf Bernotat, Chairman of the Board of Management and CEO of E.ON AG and Dr. Burckhard Bergmann, Chairman of the Board of E.ON Ruhrgas convened on a working meeting held within the frames of regular consultations between the companies.
The parties addressed the progress in the talks being conducted in pursuance of a memorandum of understanding and confirmed their intentions to keep on promoting cooperation along the entire gas chain. Special emphasis fell on the North-European gas pipeline project.
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Founded in June 2000 through the merger of VEBA and VIAG, the world’s largest privately-held energy Concern E.ON AG (Germany) has an annual turnover of over EUR 46 bln and employs more than 66 thou people.
Since March 2003, E.ON Ruhrgas AG (Ruhrgas AG before 1 July 2004) has been part of the E.ON AG Concern, overseeing the gas business of the Group in Europe, including natural gas production, marketing, transmission and storage. E.ON Ruhrgas’ 2003 turnover and profit after taxes accounted for over EUR 12 and 0.9 bln, respectively.
Entering the top three gas firms in Europe, E.ON Ruhrgas operates a roughly 11,200-km-long gas transmission network including 12 underground gas storage facilities with a total active gas capacity of 5 bcm.
Cooperation between Gazprom and E.ON Ruhrgas started back in the early 1970s when Ruhrgas together with a string of German industrial companies and banks got involved in the construction of a transit gas pipeline network intended to channel Russian gas from Siberia to West Europe.
Russian natural gas is being delivered to E.ON Ruhrgas under 7 long-term agreements with the view of partially meeting gas needs of Germany and Switzerland. Said agreements stipulate maximum gas supplies of 23 bcm/y, with additional 0.16 bcm/y slated for marketing in the Great Britain over 2003 through 2004.
Owning a 6.5% stake in Gazprom, E.ON Ruhrgas is its largest foreign stockholder.
Signed between Gazprom and E.ON Ruhrgas on 8 July 2004, the Memorandum of Understanding outlines mutual agreements to deepen bilateral cooperation in the strategic projects sector, with the North-European gas pipeline (NEGP) being a key joint business.
NEGP is targeted to mark a qualitatively new phase of cooperation with European gas customers that will be able for the 1st time in history to establish direct contacts with Russia.
The gearing up for the NEGP project implementation is progressing at full speed. A big scope of work is being performed to study a roughly 917-km-long onshore section of NEGP in Russia. Due documents for the selection of building sites for compressor stations have been registered and a draft transportation scheme for the NEGP construction has been developed in the Vologda region, with the NEGP transmission part and supporting communications projects completed. At the same time, a technological scheme of NEGP has been devised, original data on the NEGP transmission part and all projected sites for compressor stations collected and engineering survey on NEGP-supporting infrastructure initiated in the Leningrad region.
In addition, Gazprom started developing the Yuzhno-Russkoye field being the mainstay of feedstock to be shipped via NEGP. With its gas reserves valued at over 1 tcm, the field has already undergone initial seismic survey and is being equipped with drilling units.
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