The Association of Pipe Manufacturers met with Alexey Miller

At the central office of OJSC Gazprom Chairman of the Management Board Alexey Miller held a meeting on the issue of optimizing the company's costs for pipe products.
The meeting was attended by members of the Management Board of OJSC Gazprom, heads of the company's specialized divisions, a number of its subsidiaries, and Chairman of the Coordination Council of the Association of Pipe Manufacturers Ivan Shabalov , Chairman of the Board of Directors of CJSC "United Metallurgical Company" Anatoly Sedykh, Chairman of the Board of Directors of OJSC Pipe Metallurgical Company Dmitry Pumpyansky, shareholder of Chelyabinsk Pipe Rolling Plant OJSC Andrey Komarov and General Director of OJSC Severstal Alexey Mordashov.

At the meeting it was noted that in 2010 Gazprom managed to maintain prices for purchased pipe products at the 2009 level. In particular, this became possible thanks to the improvement of the payment system and a significant increase in the volume of orders.
The meeting participants emphasized that Gazprom carries out systematic work to optimize costs for the purchase of pipe products. In particular, thanks to cooperation with leading Russian manufacturers Gazprom annually reduces purchases of imported large-diameter pipes.
In general, from 2003 to 2009, the company reduced the share of imports in pipe products from 48 to 5%.
An important area of ​​reducing the cost of purchasing pipes is optimizing the timing of placing orders. Thus, advance placement of an order for the supply of pipes for the construction of the Sakhalin gas trunkline system Khabarovsk — Vladivostok" allowed us to fix the price, which as a result was lower than the prices in force in 2010 for similar products.

During the meeting, further steps in this direction were considered. Among them: improvement of the planning and ordering system (both for the next year and for the mid-term three-year period), technical requirements for pipe products, optimization of transport and logistics schemes taking into account the location of pipe factories and construction sites. The importance of developing the production of wide sheets and seamless pipes with premium high-tight threads at domestic metallurgical enterprises was also noted. "Gazprom" goes east. Until recently, the gas industry almost did not develop here; the infrastructure will have to be built almost from scratch. The scale of upcoming construction projects is enormous. Therefore, the center of our company’s investment activity is moving to the eastern regions of the country. Accordingly, optimization of basic costs is fundamentally important for us — for pipes and logistics,” — said Alexey Miller.
Following the meeting, the relevant divisions of OJSC Gazprom and subsidiaries were given instructions aimed at further optimizing the costs of purchased pipe products. In particular, by February 1, 2011, it was instructed to determine the volume of supplies for the most important capital construction projects for 2012 and 2013. This approach will facilitate the conclusion in the future of long-term agreements between Gazprom and and pipe manufacturers.

Reference:

In 2009, centralized supplies of pipe products amounted to 884 thousand tons, of which large-diameter pipes — 844 thousand tons. The plan for 2010 is, respectively, 1.325 million tons and 1.277 million tons.
The main suppliers of pipe products for OJSC Gazprom are JSC "United Metallurgical Company", JSC "Pipe Metallurgical Company", OJSC Chelyabinsk Pipe Rolling Plant and OAO Severstal.

INFORMATION DEPARTMENT OF OAO GAZPROM