The sum will be spent on the elaboration of a project business plan, as well as on seismic studies and exploration, satellite mapping, company representative Yuri Arkhremenko said, newspaper Vedomosti reports.
-This is a huge project unprecedented in its complexity, Mr. Arkhremenko underlined, the newspaper writes.
Gazprom estimates costs for the first project phase to 13-15 billion USD, and costs for the whole project to more than 40 billion USD.
The construction phase in the project is to start in fall 2009 after the conclusion of final agreements between partners Gazprom, Total and StatoilHydro.
As BarentsObserver recently reported, the drilling vessel “Bavenit” has this fall been doing test drillings around the Shtokman field. The operations are done for Shtokman Development Company by Dutch company Fugro.
