MOSCOW, June 30 (RIA Novosti) - Gazprom [RTS: GAZP] has tripled the volume of investment in recent years to $10 billion to $11 billion a year, the energy giant's chief executive said Friday.
Alexei Miller said investment in transport was double that in production since development of transport infrastructure was the key to reliable supplies.
"An integrated gas supply system is a huge system with a single control center, capable of responding flexibly to industrial, market and environmental factors," he said.
At the same time, he said that Gazprom was continuing to expand the raw material and production base.
Claude Mandil, executive director of the International Energy Agency, said in May that Gazprom was not a reliable gas supplier to Europe in the long term. The Russian gas giant has been criticized for producing gas from old fields and investing too little in the development of new ones. There is also speculation that Gazprom's ability to honor new contracts hinges on its purchases of Central Asian gas, which is seen as a dubious guarantee of future gas supplies.
But Miller was robust in his defense of the company.
"In the past five years, Gazprom has increased production by 36 billion cu m of gas," he said, adding that was comparable to production volumes in a number of natural gas supplying countries.
"The company's reserves have been growing much faster than annual production levels. We are increasing them without dipping into the reserves," he said.
