There is a gaping hole in Gazprom’s global strategy, admits Alexander Medvedev, the deputy chairman of the Russian gas giant’s management committee. There are no plans to supply Siberian fuel to Africa.

"Not yet," said the man who runs Gazprom’s export arm as he reels off a list of continents and nations that will soon be linked to his Moscow office in a complex web of long-term gas supply contracts.

"We have enough reserves to meet the demand not only for Europe but also for Asia — China, Korea and Japan — and also the United States and Canada. Not Africa, yet."

Normally reserved and softly spoken, the head of Gazexport is feeling combative. Since January, when it stopped exports to Ukraine in a dispute over gas prices, his company has been under attack from European politicians and pundits. It has been variously labelled the instrument of the Kremlin’s policy, a bullying monopolist and an unreliable supplier during the January freeze.

It is the last accusation — unreliable supplier — that hurts the most. Gazprom prides itself on its unblemished record of shipping gas right through the Cold War, currently piping a third of Western Europe’s supply. The European Commission wants more competiton, an end to Gazprom’s export monopoly, a proposal that even drew recent support from Alexei Kudrin, the Russian finance minister.

Mr Medvedev gives such ideas short shrift. "I cannot agree. The single export channel is the basis of security of supply today." He sees the criticism as evidence of the Commission’s failure to understand how the gas industry differs from oil.

The European Commission’s Green Paper on energy is one-sided, he said. "To put in question the position of Gazprom as a single channel in export supply could bring the opposite result. It will bring more risks to supply."

The EU is treating gas as if it were just an oil product, he said, whereas gas requires huge investments in infrastructure which make Gazprom as dependent on its European customers as they are on supply from Siberia. Gazprom needs the long-term contracts criticised by the European Commission to back its long-term projects.

"Security of supply cannot be separated from security of demand. We are dependent on hard currency earnings. It is not just a question of money [profit] but it is a question of our continued investment in new projects."

According to the Gazexport chief, infrastructure is at the heart of the problem in the Ukraine. "When the Soviet Union was dissolved, politicians made a killing dividing the body of the unified transportation system without understanding what they were doing. Today we are trying to restore it."

Gazprom is also trying to create alternatives to the transit route through Ukraine, notably the North European Gas Pipeline, a $5 billion project to lay a pipe the length of the Baltic, linking Western Siberian gasfields directly to Germany.

Critics of Gazprom question the expense, pointing to a rarely discussed weakness in the company’s core business: noting Gazprom’s output is flat, its three giant fields Urengoy, Yamburg and Komsomolskoye, are in decline while its export obligations are growing every year. There is a tension between Gazprom’s desire to invest downstream in consumer markets and the need to invest in drilling wells in ever more remote and expensive Arctic regions.

Gazprom will make up the shortfall, say analysts, by importing gas cheaply from Turkmenistan and by giving up part of its unprofitable domestic gas market to foreign and domestic rivals while keeping the highly profitable export business for itself.

It is part of Gazprom’s strategy in negotiating with BP over the giant Kovykta gasfield that BP has earmarked for export to China.

Without Gazprom’s cooperation, BP is left with a pup, forced to sell into Russia’s domestic market gas worth $230 per 1,000 cubic metres at $41 per 1,000 cubic metres.

"It is our position that Kovykta should be developed for local demand. I don’t exclude that at a certain time Kovykta volumes will be [exported]. I cannot tell you when and how," said Mr Medvedev.

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