Mulva still wants piece of Russia gas project

ConocoPhillips chief executive Jim Mulva evidently won’t take no for an answer.

Just a week after Russia gas monopoly Gazprom rejected bids from ConocoPhillips and four other international majors to help develop Gazprom’s giant Shtokman gas field in the Arctic Barents Sea, Mulva reportedly plans to have a chat with Gazprom leadership within the next few weeks to see how his company might be able to participate in the project.

“We respect their decision,” Mulva said Oct. 17 at the American Petroleum Institute’s annual meeting, according to Dow Jones Newswires. “Unfortunately I have not had the ability to talk with Gazprom leadership, but I intend to do so within the (next) several weeks to see to what extent the industry or our company could be of help (such as) in technology.”

Also rejected were bids from U.S. major Chevron, Norway’s Statoil and Norsk Hydro and France’s Total.

All five companies had pushed hard to join the project, discovered in the early 1980s, and Gazprom had earlier said it would accept two or three of them as minority partners. The Russian company had repeatedly pushed back the deadline for choosing partners, citing the complexity of the five bids.

Gazprom, in addition to rejecting all five bids, decided that gas from the Shtokman field would go to Europe rather than be converted into liquefied natural gas for U.S. markets, as originally planned.

—Ray Tyson