Gazprom Discusses Gas Sales, Ventures, Cooperation With India : "March 16 (Bloomberg) -- OAO Gazprom, Russia's largest company by market value, will activate cooperation with India, Asia's fourth largest economy, in oil and gas, the company said.
Gazprom Deputy Chief Executive Officer Alexander Medvedev met India's junior oil minister Dinsha J. Patel in Moscow to discuss the prospects of natural gas deliveries to India, the company said today in an e-mailed statement.
Meetings are scheduled with GAIL (India) Ltd., India's biggest gas distributor, and Oil & Natural Gas Corp., the country's biggest oil explorer, to discuss cooperation in areas including development, production, transportation, refining and sales, Gazprom said.
India had proven reserves of 920 billion cubic meters of natural gas as of January 2005, the fifth largest volume in the Asia-Pacific region, after Indonesia, Australia, Malaysia and China, the Gazprom statement said.
India is competing with China for oil and gas resources from Russia, the world's largest energy producer. Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov is on a two-day trip to India before Russian President Vladimir Putin visits Beijing next week to discuss energy pipelines to the world's most populous country. Chinese and Indian companies are competing to buy a $3 billion BP Plc unit in Russia. "