India and Russia Discuss Enhancing Cooperation in Oil Sector
OVL Keen to invest in New Upstream Projects; Pll to Finalise LNG Import Pact with Gazprom Soon
Shri S Jaipal Reddy, Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas and Mr Sergey Shmatko, Minister of Energy, Russia has made a strong pitch for further deepening cooperation in the hydrocarbon sector. The two Ministers met at a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of 20th World Petroleum Congress at Doha, Qatar today. The meeting was also attended by Petroleum Secretary Shri G C Chaturvedi, Ms Deepa Gopalan Wadhwa, Indian Ambassador to Qatar, Mr Sudhir Vasudeva, CMD ONGC, MD OVL Mr D K Shroff and MD, Petronet LNG(PLL) Mr A K Balyan.
OVL showed keen interest in participating in the Sakhalin-3 and other fields. It was pointed out that the Company is in close talks with Gazprom to jointly develop projects to produce LNG, gas pipelines, its transportation and marketing. Indian side suggested swapping LNG imports of Japan from Qatar with the LNG that could be available from Russian sources like Sakhalin. Indian side also proposed participation of PLL in the projects along with OVL.
PLL informed that they would be soon finalizing the agreement for sourcing LNG from Russia under the pact arrived at with Gazprom. The Heads of Agreement for supply of about 2.5 million tones of LNG were signed recently at Singapore. The LNG is proposed to be sourced from Shtokman field. PLL further showed interest in importing more LNG as the demand in India was growing rapidly.
The leaders re-iterated the long-standing friendly relations between the two countries. Shri Reddy recalled the contribution of Russia in building capacities in the various sectors of Indian economy in general and oil and gas sector in particular.
RCJ/India-Russia bilateral meet-