Total has all but secured reserves from Gazprom’s giant Shtokman gas field in the eastern Barents Sea, after a signing ceremony in Moscow Friday clinched a 25-year development deal, with options.
“It's a technicality, but yes, we will be able to book reserves,” Reuters quoted Total boss Christophe de Margerie as saying.
Gazprom and Total will set up a “special purpose vehicle” to organize the design, financing, construction and operation of the Shtokman Phase 1 infrastructure. The entity will own Shtokman infrastructure for 25 years from field commissioning.
Once Phase 1 is over, Total will transfer its 25 percent share in the project company to Gazprom, ostensibly in return for reserves.
Gazprom owns 100 percent of Shtokman license holder OOO Sevmorneftegaz and will have sole marketing rights to gas in the 3.7-trillion-cubic-metre field.
Shtokman Phase 1 will produce 23.7 billion cubic metres of natural gas a year. Deliveries of pipeline gas are expected to start in 2013 and the first liequefied natural gas in 2014, in-line with Norwegian oil company Statoil’s stated expectations.
A contract with Sevmorneftegaz will set out the project company’s financial, geological and technical risks for producing gas, condensate and LNG.
Agreement was reached to begin work immediately on production plant, pipeline network and LNG plant in July 2007, which is confirmation of OilGas24’s reporting from Murmansk earlier this spring.
A pipeline to Murmansk and then to Vyborg on the Baltic — the North Stream pipelineGazprom’s first priority — is said to be .
Via: OiLGas24.com
Blogalaxia Tags: Gazprom,Shtokman,Total
