Russia's Gazprom said on Thursday it considered access to strategic assets as key to its relations with foreign firms and suggested it could take retaliatory measures if the EU decided to limit its expansion.
The world's largest gas producer and supplier of a quarter of Europe's gas said in a statement that it is working on "general principles for the participation of foreign partners in Gazprom oil and gas projects."
Gazprom would seek "gaining strategic assets abroad, cutting risks and improving the projects' economics thanks to the technologies of the partners, as well as increasing hydrocarbon production with minimal risk and capital expenditures."
Gazprom has repeatedly said it wants to diversify into Europe's gas transportation, distribution and power generation to gain added value and part away from its current focus on wholesale gas supplies to regional monopolies.
But many European politicians have expressed concerns about Gazprom's expansion plans following Russian gas cuts to Ukraine and oil cuts to Belarus, which led to reduction in transit supplies to Europe.
The European Union has proposed limits on the involvement of major gas suppliers in the block's gas distribution but said that it still welcomed their involvement in power generation.
Some European politicians have said the limits would copy those which already exists in Russia and other major energy producers, which give no equity access to outside investors to transportation and distribution facilities.
Russian politicians have criticised the EU's proposals, but Gazprom has so far said it was only studying them.On Thursday, a Gazprom source said the company's statement amounted to the warning.
"If those limits are approved, we can also approve some kind of counter measures by setting some general principles in Gazprom's relations with foreign companies by some document," a Gazprom source told Reuters.
"We have no plan to approve it at the moment, we are only discussing it. We need to see what the EU does and whether their documents can be detrimental for our position."
"But of course it does not mean that, as of today or in the near future, we will put on hold our bilateral talks with any foreign partner," the source added.
Many foreign companies are seeking to enter joint projects with Gazprom, which controls around a fifth of global gas reserves, but the number of successful examples is limited.
In most recent such big deal, French oil major Total agreed to take a 25 percent in an operational company, which will tap Gazprom's huge Barents Sea Shtokman field. Talks have continued for around 10 years.
(Reuters)