Russian energy monopoly Gazprom said it will work with PetroVietnam to drill a deepwater exploration well off the Vietnamese coast.
Gazprom hosted on May 6 a delegation from PetroVietnam in Moscow to discuss future activities andpotential drilling sites. Gazprom CEOAlexey Miller met with PetroVietnam National Chairman Nguyen Xuan Son.
“The drilling of a prospecting well in block No. 129 [on the Vietnamese continental shelf] is scheduled to start in the second half of 2015,” Gazprom said in a statement. “Itwould bethe first deep-water well offshoreVietnamwith the sea depth exceeding 1,600 metres atthe drilling sites.”
The participants also paid attention tothe progress with the Heads ofAgreement ondeveloping the Nagumanovskoye (Orenburg Region) and Severo-Purovskoye (Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Area) fields, Gazprom said.
Inaddition, the meeting touched upon the possible acquisition ofastake inVietnam’s Dung Quat oil refinery byGazprom and its participation inthe refinery upgrade. Itwas noted that the Heads ofAgreement onthe oil refinery stake provided Gazprom with anexclusive right tonegotiate the deal, Gazprom said.
Russia is pursuing its energy interests in Asia, looking to export more oil and natural gas to the regions developing economies. In April, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedevconfirmed Russia’s interests in the region. “In recent years, we have largely reoriented our policies towards active cooperation with the Asia-Pacific countries,” he said.
Gazprom Turns East
Alexei Kokin, a senior oil and gas analyst at UralSib Financial Corp, toldNew Europeon May 7 that Gazprom is turning to Asia because it has enormous spare capacity in Western Siberia and it cannot market this gas in Europe.
“There is no way Gazprom can increase its market share [in Europe] significantly so it has look for new markets,” Kokin said, adding that Gazprom has been slow in building liquefied natural gas (LNG) plants. “It only has Europe as the primary market and that’s why it’s sort of desperate to start selling gas to Asia, that’s primarily to China,” he added.
Kokin said a European Commission anti-trust probe against Gazprom “does not help in the sense that it’s going to end in Gazprom harmonising prices. He said that Gazprom would have to agree to a more logical pricing arrangement for its European customers. “They won’t be able to overcharge Poland or Lithuania or Bulgaria. All the European customers will be paying more-or-less the same price adjusted for gas transportation,” the UralSib expert told New Europe.
See also: EU, Ukraine out of the loop: Gazprom looks East
“I don’t think that Gazprom could ever hope to keep its old discriminatory agreements, especially with Eastern European countries for a long time. The gas market in Europe is becoming more of a real market as gas flows across the continent are getting larger,” kokin said. “Moving gas between any two points in Europe is becoming more realistic so Gazprom’s ability to price-discriminate is being eroded even without the interference of the European Commission, that’s something Gazprom had to expect,” Kokin said.
http://www.neurope.eu/article/gazprom-eyes-asia-pacific-markets/