The Gazprom headquarters hosted today a working meeting between Alexey Miller, Chairman of the Gazprom Management Committee and Zhou Jiping, President of China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC).

The parties addressed the current status of the bilateral cooperation in the energy sector placing an emphasis on issues surrounding the set-up of Russian gas supplies to China.

Alexey Miller and Zhou Jiping were unanimous confirming their interest in the Altai project implementation. The parties decided to continue a dialogue for elaborating mutually beneficial decisions.

Background

CNPC is the largest state-owned petroleum company in China (the Government holds a 100 per cent stake) and is one of the world's leading integrated oil and gas production companies.

Gazprom and CNPC signed the Agreement of Strategic Cooperation on October 14, 2004. Among other things, the Agreement covers the examination of the issues relative to the arrangement of natural gas supplies from Russia to China by Gazprom. The opportunities are also being explored for joint gas processing and gas chemicals projects in Eastern Russia and third countries. The Joint Coordinating Committee was set up to supervise the Agreement implementation. The Committee resolved to set up the Joint Working Group to ensure day-to-day execution of the Agreement in parallel with working groups for major joint businesses.

In October 2009 Gazprom and CNPC inked the Framework Agreement on major terms and conditions for natural gas supply from Russia to China. In December 2009 the Heads of Agreement for gas supply from Russia to China was signed.

The Altai project envisages building a gas pipeline to supply natural gas from fields in Western Siberia to China via the western part of the Russian-Chinese border. The gas pipeline route is planned to traverse six Russian constituents: the Republic of Altai, the Altai Territory, the Novosibirsk Region, the Tomsk Region, the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Area and the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Area – Yugra.

The Altai gas pipeline construction will start only after a gas purchase and sale agreement is inked with the Chinese side.