Whistle everyone to the shelf – Newspaper Kommersant No. 48 (7493) dated 03/22/2023

As it became known to Kommersant, Gazprom acquired a 50% stake in Gazprom Shelfproekt, a new service contractor in the field of offshore exploration. Until last summer, Gazprom Shelfproekt was called Aurora, and its beneficiary was Andrey Patrushev, the youngest son of the Secretary of the Security Council and ex-deputy head of Gazprom Neft. After this company became Gazprom’s main offshore drilling contractor, having taken control of the fleet of Gazprom’s floating drilling platforms, it was renamed. Gazprom Shelfproekt expects that the participation of the monopoly in the capital will contribute to the “effective development of the hydrocarbon potential of the continental shelf.”

According to Kommersant, in February, Gazprom received 50% in the drilling contractor Gazprom Shelfproekt. This company, having taken control of the drilling rigs of Gazprom’s subsidiary Gazprom Fleet and received orders from the monopoly, became its main offshore drilling contractor last year. Prior to this, the company also performed work for NOVATEK (see Kommersant dated July 29, 2022). Over the past year, Gazprom Shelfproekt has significantly improved its financial results. According to accounting data, the company’s revenue grew 2.8 times, to 29.4 billion rubles, profit – 2.6 times, to 4.4 billion rubles.

Gazprom told Kommersant that “on the basis of Gazprom Shelfproject, a new specialized center of engineering and technical competencies is being formed for work in offshore fields.” Gazprom Shelfproekt added that “current technological challenges and the withdrawal of foreign partners from the service market determine the need for large holdings to search for competencies for existing offshore projects.” The creation of the joint venture will contribute to “the most efficient development of the hydrocarbon potential of the continental shelf,” the company believes. The terms of the deal and other beneficiaries of the company are not disclosed.

Until July last year, Gazprom Shelfproekt was called Aurora, and, according to official data, Andrei Patrushev, the youngest son of the Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation and the former deputy head of Gazprom Neft for offshore projects, acted as its beneficiary and head of the board of directors. The management of Gazprom Shelfproekt still mentions ex-managers of the offshore subsidiaries of Gazprom Neft, which were supervised by Mr. Patrushev. So, the company is headed by the ex-head of Gazpromneft-Sakhalin Alexander Korobkov.

According to the financial statements for 2021, the service company was owned on parity by Polyarnaya Zvezda and Sirius Holding. It follows from the SPARK data that Georgy Rodionov and Anatoly Chiryatyev each own 50% in Sirius. Mr. Chiryatyev and JSC with a similar name, Sirius (owned by Igor Bogomolov, member of the board of directors of Gazprom Shelfproject), as Kommersant reported in July 2022, entered the capital of Investgeoservice, a major drilling contractor of NOVATEK. Kommersant’s interlocutors associated this deal with the interests of Mr. Patrushev.

Anastasia Demenkova became the head of the board of directors of Gazprom Shelfproekt in 2022, she also heads Sirius Holding. That is the name of the former head of the legal and corporate affairs department of Gazpromneft-Sakhalin. Polyarnaya Zvezda is headed by Rustam Romanenkov, former Deputy Head for Legal and Corporate Affairs of Gazprom Neft Shelf, who is also listed as Deputy Head of the ANO Center for Arctic Initiatives, which was created by Andrey Patrushev in 2019 after leaving Gazprom Neft. The owners of Polyarnaya Zvezda are Marina Kazanina (40%) and Neva Invest (60%), which acquired Mr. Patrushev’s 28.33% stake in the offshore exploration contractor Marine Exploration Expedition last year.

It is not clear who acted as the seller of the Gazprom Shelfproekt package, but in 2022 Polyarnaya Zvezda transferred a 25% stake in Gazprom Shelfproekt to its other parity joint venture with Sirius Holding – Aurora Capital.

The Ministry of Natural Resources told Kommersant that in 2022, the construction of wells in the Kara (Leningradskoye field) and Barents (Ice field) seas was completed at Gazprom’s sites using the Northern Lights drilling rig, as a result, industrial gas inflows were obtained. In 2023, in the Kara Sea, Gazprom plans to build an exploratory well at the gas condensate field im. V. A. Dinkov of the Rusanovsky site with the help of the Arkticheskaya jack-up rig.

Taking into account the strategy of recent years to establish control over key contractors, it is logical that Gazprom entered the capital of Gazprom Shelfproject, Mikhail Burmistrov, head of Infoline-Analytics, believes, but now the company is faced with the task of not increasing production, in particular, developing sales for export and construction of additional infrastructure for export to Asia. According to him, the company is fulfilling its license obligations, but it is obvious that the commercial development of the shelf, taking into account the difficult ice conditions, equipment problems and technological sanctions, as well as the unstable situation in the commodity markets, is not a priority and will be shifted beyond the horizon of 2030.

Dmitry Kozlov, Tatyana Dyatel