Gazprom CEO Miller holding talks in Greece - source
MOSCOW. March 12 (Interfax) - OJSC Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller is holding talks in Athens on March 12, a source knowledgeable about the situation told Interfax.
"Tomorrow the Gazprom chief departs to China for negotiations," the source said.
Greece's privatization agency Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund chose in January the participants for the final phase of candidate-selection for the purchase of DEPA and DESPA. Bids in the final round were submitted by OJSC Gazprom and a joint venture of Mytilineos and Motor Oil - Greece's M & M GasCo. OJSC Negusneft, part of Sintez, bid for both companies. State Oil Company of the Azerbaijani Republic (SOCAR) and GEK Terna of Greece are contending only for DESPA. The agency still wants to close the deal before the end of next month.
The likelihood of Russian companies purchasing DEPA has prompted cautions from the European Union and United States over the opening of the Greek market to Russian gas interests, the Financial Times wrote in January. However, Athens faces the necessity of carrying out its privatization plans, which have been worked out with international creditors.
Gazprom is hoping to ink a contract to supply China with gas via the 'eastern' route before this year is out. Gazprom has been negotiating deliveries of Russian gas to its huge southern neighbor for almost a decade now. The Russian gas giant wanted initially to sell the Chinese gas via the 'western route': thirty billion cubic meters (bcm) from Yamal through the Altai pipeline for delivery to western regions in the country. But there China's need for gas was not as strong as on its eastern coast, and the country had no great desire to pay the European price for it.
Gazprom had declined to negotiate deliveries via the eastern route - thirty-eight bcm per year - until the matter of the western route was settled. But it changed its position at the end of last year after the making of a final investment decision on the development of the Chayanda oil and gas condensate deposit in Yakutia.