October 2009 Vol. 236 No. 10

Projects

Gazprom and EDF announce trans-Atlantic gas swap

Gazprom Marketing & Trading Limited and EDF Trading announced an agreement Oct. 20 to swap natural gas between the U.S. and European markets over the next five years.

Under this agreement, EDF will deliver to Gazprom in the U.S. a quantity of 0.5 billion cubic meters of natural gas per year (about 50 million cubic feet per day) for the next five years. Gazprom will deliver to EDF the same quantity of natural gas per year in the UK within the same time period.

Gazprom announced the launch of its North American natural gas business Oct. 1.
“This agreement enables us to ramp up our U.S. operation and provides us with gas supplies in areas of strategic importance,” said Vitaly Vasiliev, CEO of Gazprom.

For EDF, CEO John Rittenhouse said, “This agreement will help to extend the coverage of our gas business beyond Europe as we continue to diversify the sourcing of gas for the EDF Group.”