Gazprom chairman Alexei Miller insisted in an interview published on Friday that the company had the trust of its foreign partners and rejected an EU warning that it might have to sell its proposed Baltic Sea pipeline.
In the interview with Kommersant newspaper, Gazprom's chief denied the company was a "monster" and insisted it was moving to implement market conditions at home and abroad.
The company would continue to divest itself of non-core assets such as petro-chemical unit Sibur, with sales of such assets expected to net more than US$1 billion this year, Miller said.
"Against a background of unceasing attacks on Gazprom from various politicians and newspapers, European business is making a rational choice and trying to develop and strengthen cooperation with us," he said.
"Our partners have 100-percent trust in Gazprom. New contracts for gas supply, new joint projects, new gas transport routes -- these are the best answer to all the sceptics in Europe and especially beyond its borders," Miller said.
He also rejected a warning this month by the EU's Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes that Gazprom would "sooner or later" be forced by competition rules to sell its stake in the Nordstream pipeline, to be built from Russia under the Baltic Sea to Germany.
"The Nordstream pipeline goes from the Russian coast along the bottom of the Baltic Sea in neutral waters," Miller said.
"I would also add that the gas to be delivered through Nordstream has already been sold and consumers will be waiting for it in 2010. So we would advise the European Commission to carefully study the possible influence of hold-ups in implementation of this project on future market prices in Europe," he said.
In the wide-ranging interview Miller also insisted that the vast Shtokman gas field in the Barents Sea would begin producing gas in 2013, despite continued uncertainty about which foreign partners might be involved.
He said that Gazprom was committed to switching to market prices for industrial consumers as this was essential for the diversification of Russia's economy.
Separately the company's number two Dmitry Medvedev said that Gazprom was not in negotiations to buy a stake in BP's Russian joint venture TNK-BP, from which it last week bought a stake in a Siberian gas field development.
"There are no negotiations with TNK-BP on this subject and at the moment there is no place to talk about such a thing," he was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies.
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