MOSCOW, April 4 (RIA Novosti) - Europe is facing tough competition for Russian natural gas from the Asian-Pacific region and the United States, an official with a major German gas company said Tuesday.
Reiner Hartmann, the head of the Moscow representative office of E.ON Ruhrgas AG, said Europe was no longer the only consumer of Russian natural gas, and had to compete with China, India and the United States.
He said that Russian natural gas monopoly Gazprom was capable of supplying gas to all these countries, but that the company's investments into additional routes for deliveries to Europe was a positive trend.
Hartmann said it was essential to conclude long-term contracts, since gas prices would likely continue to grow. Long-term agreements were particularly important for projects with high-level investments, he said.
On September 8, 2005, Gazprom and Germany's BASF AG and E.ON Ruhrgas signed an agreement to build the North European Gas Pipeline.
Construction under the 4.7-billion euro project, which is managed by Gazprom, began last year. The pipeline, which is to include two parallel legs measuring 750 miles each, will run from near the Russian city of Vyborg to the Greifswald region on the German coast.
