The Russian gas giant, Gazprom, has chosen the Norwegian company, StatoilHydro, as its second partner for the development of the Shtokman gas field. The agreement between the companies will be signed shortly.

The Norwegian company will get a 24% stake compared to the 25% allocated to France's Total, which is Gazprom’s first foreign partner. This means Gazprom's stake in the development project is reduced to 51%.

StatoilHydro has unique experience and technology for working in icy Arctic waters, which will be invaluable when developing the field, which is located 500 kilometres from the shore.

Helge Lund, the President of StatoilHydro, expressed his hopes that the project will bring Russia and Norway closer together.

“We truly appreciate being a partner in the Shtokman project. This is a very large, extremely complicated and industrially challenging project. I think that Gazprom has put together a very strong team, with Gazprom, Totale and StatoilHydro to work on this project. We believe that this project will also be useful for technology development in the Arctic area. We also believe that the project agreement we signed today will lead to industrial development not only on the Russian side, but also on the Norwegian side, bringing the companies and also the countries closer together,” stated Helge Lund.

The gas field’s resources are estimated at 3.7 billion cubic metres, which is enough to meet EU needs for six years.