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Exit for last Shtokman partner

Gazprom leader Aleksey Miller and his people are not ready to revive Shtokman plans despite interest from partner Total.

French oil major Total is increasingly likely to sell its 25 percent stake in the Shtokman Development AG to Gazprom, company sources say.

Location

While Statoil in summer 2012 returned its 24 percent project stake to licenseholder Gazpom, the second foreign partner Total has been hesitant to give up the giant gas project in the Barents Sea.

Following the withdrawal of the Norwegians, Gazprom officials in May 2013 admitted that the company is leaving the Shtokman project “to future generations”. At the same time, the company cancelled a tender on the construction of a LNG plant in Murmansk Oblast.

However, the French company has continued to develop alternative development plans for the project and in August this year reportedly presented a new and economically more viable project concept, newspaper Vedomosti reports.

Gazprom leaders carefully assessed the proposals. However, they did not take any decision on the revival of the project, the Russian newspaper informs. According to sources close to Gazprom, the proposals from Total will not help make the gas project sufficiently profitable.

The company officials confirm that Gazprom is ready to take over Total´s 25 percent project stake.

With the Shtokman project dead, Total is likely to instead focus its attention to other projects in the Russian Arctic, among them the Yamal LNG.

The Shtokman field is one of the biggest offshore fields in the world and has been called “the mother of all gas projects”. Murmansk Oblast was to be the key region for project activities and for years prepared for the Shtokman investments. However, also Murmansk in the end lost belief in the project. In June, regional Governor Marina Kovtun admitted that her region was suffering from a “post-Shtokman syndrome” and that locals long have “not been able to free themselves from this idea, this dream, this religion”.