Gazprom Offers to Buy All of Libya’s Gas
Editors - Even if this deal does not happen, the Russian company has two things for sure - global ambitions and cash. Please, read the Reuters story about this new business development:
The Russian gas export monopoly Gazprom wants to buy any available natural gas produced by Libya and some of the country’s oil, the top Libyan oil official said on Wednesday. “Gazprom has expressed its willingness to buy Libyan oil and any available quantities of gas,” the official, Shokri Ghanem, told Reuters, adding that it did not mean Gazprom would buy all of Libya’s oil.
Gazprom’s chief, Alexei B. Miller, met with Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya, after which the company said in a statement that it hoped to buy, at market prices, “all future volumes” of gas, oil and liquefied natural gas available for export. A cooperation agreement signed in 2006 between Gazprom, which supplies about a quarter of Europe’s gas, and Algeria led to fears that Europe’s biggest two suppliers could work together like the OPEC group of oil exporters.
A Gazprom sign in a Russian city
Gazprom’s latest bid to strengthen its grip on gas supplies around Europe comes as no surprise, said David Cox, the president of Poyry Energy Consulting. “It fits with their strategy of, if not forming a gas OPEC by discussion, then doing it by just cornering all the resources,” he said. “Hydrocarbons is where they want to be, and having as much of it as possible.” Mr. Cox said that it was unlikely Libya would want to commit to selling all its oil to one buyer and that the country would probably stick to selling its crude on the open market.
Gazprom said it was also planning a joint refining venture with the National Oil Corporation of Libya, and accepted Libya’s offer to build pipelines to Europe from Libya, in North Africa. Gazprom and the Italian energy company Eni formed a partnership in 2006 that allowed the companies to swap energy assets, including those of Eni in Libya.
