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OMV plans to cover entering Russia’s gas fields through asset swap — CEO

VIENNA, February 18. /TASS/. Austrian oil and gas company OMV expects to fully cover entering the Urengoi oil and gas field through an asset swap, the company’s CEO Rainer Seele said Thursday.

"We plan the swap so that we completely cover it through the assets. If at the end of the evaluation there are insignificant funds left, we can simply not take this figure into account," he said.

"We have agreed to this structure, and will not depart from it," Seele saod, noting that the company definitely will not borrow money on the market under this deal. According to him, the company plans to spend no more than 5-10% of all investment funds on the development of the Achimov deposits near Urengoi and construction of the Nord Stream-2 project before 2020.

At the same time, OMV expects to be able to produce about 50,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day in Russia in 4 years. In general, before 2020 the company aims at least to maintain the production level of 300,000 barrels per day.

"An increase of 20% is possible if we are able to implement an assets swap with Gazprom and restore the production site in Libya. Then production will increase to 360,000 barrels per day," he said. "It's good that this year we will already know whether we are getting production from Russia or not," he added.

Earlier, the company’s CEO said that OMV was planning to determine the list of assets that can be offered to Gazprom by summer.

Gazprom and OMV signed the term sheet on the asset swap in September 2015. If the transaction is implemented, OMV will have 24.98% participation stake in Achimov Areas 4A and 5A development project at the Urengoi oil and gas condensate field in exchange for Gazprom’s participation in OMV assets.