Business | Oil & Gas
Russia delays Arctic gas field plans amid cool US relations
Russia has again delayed the $20 billion development of a giant Arctic gas field, planned to help supply the US market, as attention focuses on a frostier mood between Washington and Moscow.
- Reuters
- Published: 00:00 May 19, 2006
St Petersburg: Russia has again delayed the $20 billion development of a giant Arctic gas field, planned to help supply the US market, as attention focuses on a frostier mood between Washington and Moscow.
Russian gas monopoly Gazprom will name its foreign partners for the huge Shtokman gas project 'this summer', Energy Minister Viktor Khristenko said, adding a further delay to the project that was first projected to start in 2000.
Keeping US firms ConocoPhillips and Chevron, suitors for a slice of Shtokman, hanging on has been linked to friction caused by a tough Washington stance on Russia joining the World Trade Organisation.
Russia's Aeroflot earlier this month also delayed a $3 billion plane order, prompting speculation it will pick Europe's Airbus ahead of US Boeing.
Delays in that deal too pointed to political factors, analysts said. The Moscow Times newspaper yesterday quoted Kremlin spokes-man Dmitry Peskov as saying that Russian presidential aide Igor Shuvalov spelt out the position on Shtokman to a Washington audience on April 12.
Peskov said Shuvalov had warned that "if the United States puts new demands to Russia in WTO negotiations that haven't been put before other countries, then it can't be excluded that new demands will be put before American companies for participating in the Shtokman project."
Gazprom has also shortlisted France's Total and Norway's Statoil and Norsk Hydro for Shtokman.
Gazprom wants to choose two or three partners for the project but has repeatedly delayed the final announcement from the first quarter of 2006, saying it needed more time to analyse the proposals on how to tap the Arctic Barents Sea field.
The most recent delay came on Wednesday, when Gazprom deputy head Alexander Ryazanov said in Tashkent the announcement was delayed from mid-May until the end of the month.
He also said that recent criticism of Russia by US Vice President Dick Chen-ey will not affect the choice of partners for Shtokman.
Cheney said earlier this month that Moscow was playing power politics with its vast energy resources and warned against any attempt to turn oil and gas into tools of intimidation or blackmail.
Gazprom, the world's largest gas producer, which supplies Europe with a quarter of its gas, plans to make Shtokman its key platform for shipping liquefied natural gas to the United States.
Located under the stormy and iceberg-strewn Barents Sea, 550 km from Russia and Norway, Shtokman has reserves of around 3.7 trillion cubic metres of gas.
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