By Katherine Griffiths
Last Updated: 12:52am BST 11/04/2007
Russian gas giant Gazprom aims to become the largest company in the world, with a market capitalisation of $1,000bn (£508bn) within a decade.
The target, unveiled by its deputy chief executive, Alexander Medvedev, underlines the global ambitions of the Russian natural gas monopoly.
Gazprom is already the world’s biggest gas producer, with more than eight times the energy reserves of US oil company ExxonMobil. Currently Exxon is the largest company in the world, with a market capitalisation of $440bn, but Gazprom aims to overtake its American rival. Mr Medvedev said: “We will reach a $1,000bn market capitalisation in a period of seven to 10 years. We’d like to be the most-valued and most-capitalised company in the world.”
Gazprom is worth $244bn at the moment – Shell and BP have market values of around $210m. A $1,000bn market capitalisation would exceed Russia’s total 2006 economic output, which was $975bn.
The company is at the heart of the plan by Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, to use the country’s energy resources to bolster its influence abroad. The Russian government owns more than 50pc of the company. Gazprom took control last year of Royal Dutch Shell’s Sakhalin-2 venture, which plans to start shipping liquefied natural gas in 2008. It is also developing the Shtokman project in the Arctic, Russia’s largest untapped deposit of the fuel.
The company also wants to build on its powerful position in the gas market to expand into oil and other areas – potentially nuclear energy – and has been discussing with other gas-producing companies this week whether to create an Opec-style “gas cartel”.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2007/04/11/cngazprom11.xml
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