Russia begins work on $2.5 bln Shtokman platforms

By Denis Pinchuk

VYBORG, Russia, July 4 (Reuters) - A plant in Russia's far western port city of Vyborg started work on Friday on the first of two rig drilling platforms for the giant Shtokman gas field in the Barents Sea.

The first will be ready in October 2010, and the second in March 2011, the plant's director Valery Levchenko said. The cost of both will total 59 billion roubles ($2.51 billion).

Work on the second platform will begin in September-October of next year.

Russian gas export monopoly Gazprom (GAZP.MM: Quote, Profile, Research) owns a 51 percent stake in the ambitious Shtokman project, which has recoverable reserves of 3.8 trillion cubic metres (tcm), making it one of the world's biggest gas fields.

France's Total (TOTF.PA: Quote, Profile, Research) has a 25 percent stake, while Norway's StatoilHydro (STL.OL: Quote, Profile, Research) holds the balance.

Gazprom is also planning a tender in the spring of 2009 for the construction of two more Shtokman platforms.

"We'll figure out the results over three months. The cost (of the platform) will be around the same as the first two, perhaps a little less," the general director of Gazprom's vessel-building subsidiary Gazflot, Yury Shalamov, told journalists.

Shtokman will need around 10 platforms in all, he said, and Gazprom will need around 40 for all its shelf projects.