RWE Dea seeks Caspian region gas licences - paper

FRANKFURT, March 25 (Reuters) - RWE oil and gas unit Dea (RWEG.DE) is looking to expand operations in the Caspian gas region, Dea Chief Executive Georg Schoening said in a newspaper interview published on Wednesday.

"We are in talks with Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan...I hope we will be able to agree a contract with Turkmenistan in the first half (of 2009)," he told the Financial Times Deutschland, adding production might start in 2017 or 2018 at the earliest.

RWE Dea was also looking into possible Kazakh projects, the paper quoted him as saying.

RWE is one of the partners in the Nabucco gas pipeline consortium that aims to bring Caspian region and Middle Eastern gas to Europe via Turkey.

Nabucco is an attempt for European gas firms to become more independent from Russian gas pipeline supplies but they compete in the region with Russian state monopoly Gazprom (GAZP.MM) which is also seeking contracts with the supplier countries.

The RWE group has plans to invest annually 850 million euros into gas and treble its gas production via Dea by 2013.

Group CEO Juergen Grossmann this way wants to cover a quarter of RWE's overall gas requirements for its distribution subsidiaries and power plants from own sources, compared with 15 percent now.

RWE recently opened an office in Dubai, not far from Nabucco's route and close to Qatari liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals. Rival E.ON (EONGn.DE) is also stepping up its representations in the area.

Dea reported it raised its gas output by 3 percent to 3.3 billion cubic meters (bcm) last year while oil output shrank by eight percent to 2.5 million cubic metres. (Reporting by Vera Eckert; editing by James Jukwey)