The Russian prime minister, Mikhail Kassianov, has announced that the French oil group TotalFinaElf is prepared to invest in Russia’s Shtokman gas field as part of a shared-production agreement. This news was confirmed by TotalFinaElf itself, which claimed that it hopes to acquire 25% of the giant field’s exploration rights. The field in question, which is located 550km off the coast of Murmansk, is 350m deep and has an estimated gas-production potential of 3000 billion cubic metres. In the first instance, around USD 10 billion will be invested in the construction of, among other things, an offshore gas pipeline, a pipeline connected to St Petersburg, and an oil platform. Once these facilities are in place, the field should yield between 22 billion and 23 billion cubic metres of gas per year. This production rate is expected to rise to 90 billion cubic metres in the longer term, once further investments have been made.
