Gazprom to Sell as Much as 90% of Shtokman LNG in North America

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Oct. 20 (Bloomberg) -- OAO Gazprom, the world’s biggest natural-gas producer, plans to ship 80 to 90 percent of the fuel from its Shtokman project in the Arctic to North America as recovery of the world’s largest economy spurs energy use.

The Moscow-based company plans to sign 20-year contracts in 2010’s first half to use gas-import terminals on the U.S. Gulf and East coasts, said John Hattenberger, head of Gazprom’s energy-trading unit in Houston. Shtokman will produce an estimated 1 billion cubic feet of liquefied natural gas a day starting in 2014, followed by an additional 2 billion cubic feet a day in about 2016 and 1 billion cubic feet in 2018, he said.

“North America would be a key target market,” Hattenberger, president of Gazprom Marketing & Trading USA Inc., said today in an interview at Bloomberg’s Houston bureau. “If you take a long-term view of this, all the signals are there that say we need more gas.”

Gazprom’s LNG expansion is central to a plan to sell about 6 billion cubic feet of gas a day in the world’s largest market for the heating and power-plant fuel within a decade. That’s equivalent to about 10 percent of U.S. gas consumption and worth more than $11 billion a year at current prices.

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