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Roadmap for Shtokman development

Despite loads of trouble, Total CEO Christophe de Margerie and Gazprom President Aleksey Miller are not ready to give up the Shtokman project. Photo: Shtokman.ru

In a bid to bring the huge Arctic gas project out of deadlock, project partners Gazprom and Total start preparing a Shtokman roadmap.

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Company leaders Aleksey Miller and Christophe de Margerie in a meeting last week confirmed that the roadmap is to prepare the ground for the signing of a new Shtokman project agreement, a press release reads.

The roadmap will include ways to bring down project development costs, RIA Novosti reports.

The two companies have been Shtokman partners for the past six years, but are still not at terms with regard to several basic issues in project development. In August 2012, a leading Gazprom official admitted that the project has been postponed “until better times”. Meanwhile, representatives of operator company Shtokman Development AG (SDAG) underline that project preparations are still progressing and that the giant field ultimately will deliver significant volumes of LNG to the market.

As previously reported, Norwegian energy major Statoil in 2012 pulled out of the project and handed in its 24 percent stake in the SDAG to licenseholder Gazprom. Total continues to control 25 percent of the operator company. 

The Shtokman field is with its 3,9 trillion cubic meters of gas one of the biggest offshore gas fields in the world. According to the latest project development model, all the gas is to be liquefied at a plant in the Kola Peninsula and sold in the world market.

Progress in the Shtokman project has been stalled by the last years’ rapid chances in the international gas market. Today, the huge field in the Barents Sea is also challenged by a number of other promising Arctic projects, among them the fields operated by Rosneft.