OREANDA-NEWS. Today Vitaly Markelov, Deputy Chairman of the Gazprom Management Committee and Olivier Lazare, Chairman of Shell Group in Russia signed a Memorandum of Cooperation in the labor protection and industrial safety area as part of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum 2015.

“Industrial safety, personnel’s life and health are the undisputed priorities for our companies. We permanently control the production safety and labor protection systems and introduce the best global practices to improve them. The success within the Sakhalin II project is a vivid demonstration of this fact.

Today’s Memorandum contributes to broadening the cooperation with Shell, our key partner. It is symbolic that the document was signed on the threshold of the year proclaimed in Gazprom as the Year of Labor Protection,” said Vitaly Markelov.

“Shell operates in more than 70 countries under very different conditions across all sectors of the oil and gas business. But the top priority of our company remains unchanged and this is the safety of people. The document signed today is motivated exactly by this value-oriented approach. We are very happy that our strategic partner shares this value. We are confident that our combined experience will let us take and keep the leadership positions in this area as well as serve as an example for other major companies,” said Olivier Lazare.

Shell is a British-Dutch oil and gas company focused on hydrocarbon production, processing and marketing in over 90 countries worldwide.

As part of Sakhalin II, Russia’s first LNG plant with the annual capacity of 9.6 million tons of LNG was commissioned in 2009. Sakhalin Energy is the Sakhalin II project operator with the ownership distributed among Gazprom (50 per cent plus one share), Shell (27.5 per cent minus one share), Mitsui & Co. (12.5 per cent) and Mitsubishi Corporation (10 per cent). The plant produced 10.7 million tons of LNG in 2014.

In 2014 Gazprom and Shell signed the memorandum-roadmap to prepare FEED documents for the third LNG production train within the Sakhalin II project.

In 2013 Gazprom and Shell signed the Memorandum outlining the principles of cooperation within hydrocarbon exploration and development in Russia’s Arctic shelf and a part of deepwater shelf abroad.