Gazprom, StatoilHydro and Total could pull out of the Shtokman Development Co. before a final development decision is made in late 2009, while the criteria for hiring contractors — Russian or foreign — is still “open”, Scandoil.com has learned.

“It’s a question that can’t be handled at this time,” StatoilHydro’s industrial relations boss in Russia, Benedikt Henriksen, said of possible tender and procurement pressures yet to come for partners in the 3.8-trillion-cubic-metre Shtokman field.

“It could happen that the (overall) design isn’t good enough,” Henriksen said, adding that “cost structures could prove unacceptable.”

Unlike the Sakhalin Island offshore project in the Russian Far East, the oil companies share stock in Shtokman’s development company rather than interests in the gas field, making it easier to disengage should efforts to bring hundreds of suppliers to the Murmansk and Archangel regions create “tensions”.

Suppliers in the North are needed in Russia for “The Mother of all Projects” in the eastern Barents Sea, some 640 kilometres off northern Russia. Some 100 Russian sub-contractors in Murmansk and Archangel regions and roughly 350 in northern Norway have been “identified” as possible Shtokman contractors.

Russia’s production-sharing contracts, or PSAs, as at Sakhalin, have defined local content rules. Shokman is not a PSA and will have its own local content requirements.

The first piped gas at Shtokman is expected by 2013, with first LNG shipments in 2014. Some 24 billion cubic metres of gas per year will be produced from Shtokman Phase 1.

Details of the Shtokman project appear in the next issue of Scandinavian Oil-Gas Magazine, a Scandoil.com affiliate.

Tags: Shtokman, StatoilHydro