UPDATE: BP, Russia’s Rosneft agree to sell 7–20 bcm of gas in Europe

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VIENNA, Jan 25 (PRIME) -- British oil and gas giant BP has signed a memorandum with Russian oil major Rosneft to sell 7–20 billion cubic meters of gas in Europe per year, if Rosneft is allowed to export it, Vladimir Drebentsov, a vice president of BP Russia, told reporters on Wednesday.

“It says that if Rosneft gets the right to sell gas to Europe, our traders will be happy to participate in its sales,” he said.

He said possible volumes amounted to 7–20 bcm per year, while Rosneft will have to transport the gas to Europe itself.

“I would not like to pay much attention to the volume, our traders have a total amount of contracts reaching 400 billion (cubic meters)…Traders are able to sell a very large amount, the point here is how the gas will get to Europe. We are not taking part in transportation of the gas from Russia to Europe,” he said.

Bloomberg reported that Andree Stracke, chief commercial officer at Germany’s second largest energy company RWE AG, said that RWE was not holding substantive talks with Rosneft on possible exports of gas to the country.

Business newswire RBC reported earlier that Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin had sent a letter to President Vladimir Putin, asking him to end the monopoly on gas exports by gas giant Gazprom. Earlier on Wednesday, presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the Kremlin is yet to decide whether to allow oil major Rosneft to export gas to Europe.

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