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Russian gas giant visits Alaska Gazprom board members, chairman, meet with state officials, former Gov. Hickel, ConocoPhillips CEO Mulva in Anchorage Wesley Loy Anchorage Daily News
Top executives with giant Russian energy company Gazprom met in Anchorage the week of Oct. 13 with aides to Gov. Sarah Palin as well as executives from oil company ConocoPhillips and Arctic Slope Regional Corp.
Gazprom, a government-controlled natural gas producer also involved in Russia’s banking and telecom industries, sent a delegation of a dozen people including Alexei Miller, chairman of the company’s management committee.
The delegation took part in a “scientific research seminar” and met Oct. 13 with Alaska’s natural resources commissioner, Tom Irwin, deputy commissioner Marty Rutherford and Kevin Banks, state oil and gas director.
The Russians also met separately with Jim Mulva, Conoco’s chief executive, and ASRC managers. And they had lunch with former Alaska Gov. Wally Hickel.
“It was emphasized at the meetings and seminars that the working conditions in the traditional areas of Gazprom’s business activity were similar to the ones in Alaska,” said a Gazprom press release issued Oct. 14. “Gazprom has gained an extensive experience in hydrocarbon field development, gas pipeline construction and operation, environmental protection and resolution of social problems in the Extreme North environment. Gazprom’s experience will be used while implementing similar projects in Alaska.”
Introduction of company Rutherford said Oct. 14 she and the other state officials met the Russians in the governor’s conference room in the Atwood Building downtown. Ashley Reed, an Alaska lobbyist, arranged the meeting, she said.
“It was a very high-level group of people. It seemed to include a lot of their board members,” Rutherford said. “They wanted to just tell us about Gazprom. They had interpreters and they just took the opportunity to walk us through a slideshow and to answer our questions.”
The Russians, she said, didn’t ask for anything and didn’t talk about the proposed Alaska natural gas pipeline.
“They just wanted to convey they’re a very large, very highly capitalized company,” Rutherford said.
After the midday meeting, which lasted around an hour, the Russians attended a seminar in a Hotel Captain Cook conference room. Rutherford and her colleagues attended the event, which she said included some Conoco people and dealt with topics such as subsea pipelines.
The Russians also talked up liquefied natural gas, or LNG, Rutherford said.
Meeting with Mulva Conoco spokeswoman Natalie Lowman said the meeting with Mulva, at the company’s downtown office tower, was about “broad-based business opportunities” and not specifically about the gas pipeline.
Houston-based Conoco, with partner BP, has proposed a pipeline called Denali to carry huge North Slope gas reserves to the Lower 48. Denali is competing with a similar project from Calgary-based TransCanada Corp.
Lowman seemed to downplay that the Gazprom meeting was held in Anchorage.
“This was a convenient location for the two companies to meet up and discuss potential business ventures or whatever else big companies talk about,” she said.
Gazprom operates Russia’s domestic gas pipeline network and is a major exporter of gas into Europe. The company has been looking to expand its operations abroad.
In June, media reports quoted Miller as saying at an international business forum in St. Petersburg that Gazprom had made a proposal to Conoco and BP for a role in the Alaska gas pipeline.
Conoco in recent years unsuccessfully pursued a stake in Gazprom’s giant Shtokman gas field in the Barents Sea.
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