On 28 September Budva, Montenegro, hosted the regular meeting of the Committee on Law, Banking and Finance of the European Business Congress. Investment and Financial Company METROPOL organized the event.
The meeting discussed the current problems and prospects of complex oil and gas projects in the context of financial fragility of the global markets. The meeting participants presented papers demonstrating the factors for success of the Russian and foreign oil and gas projects. Also, such topical issues as the financing of projects in the context of market volatility and the importance of optimizing the tax system of the State for the implementation of complex oil and gas projects were discussed. The meeting was moderated by Hawk Sunshine, Managing Director of Portfolio Investments of IFC METROPOL.
The meeting was opened by Deputy Chairman of OAO Gazprom, the head of the Committee on Law, Banking and Finance, EBC, Andrey Kruglov. In his opening speech, he stressed the importance of the event in terms of business efficiency, thanked IFC METROPOL for their hospitality and support in organizing the meeting.

Further, presentation “New projects. Funding of Success” was made by CEO of Sakhalin Energy Andrey Petrovich Galaev. He shared his assessment of the economic situation in the oil and gas sector.  Vice-President for Finance of Statoil, Jane L. Nagy spoke about the company's prospects in the implementation of complex oil and gas projects in the current financial climate.

Analytic Department Director of IFC METROPOL Mark Rubinstein made a presentation on topic “LNG: prospects of development and financing of projects in the context of market volatility.” In his presentation, he considered the dynamics of growth in production and consumption of liquefied natural gas (LNG) in the world, the main risks of the projects on construction of plants to liquefy natural gas, as well as an example of successful implementation of this project in Papua New Guinea.

Ben Monaghan, JP Morgan investment bank Head of the work with oil and gas companies in Europe, Middle East and Africa, told about the financial ‘catalysts’ for transactions in the oil and gas sector. In turn, Sergei Chelyshkov, Head of tax and legal consulting, CJSC BDO, touched upon the political side of oil and gas projects and talked about the importance of modernizing the tax system for the successful exploration of the Russian Arctic shelf.

The above matters have sparked great interest among the audience who actively asked questions to the speakers. All the participants appreciated the relevance of the topics and the level of the event organization as a whole.

Conference participants

During the meeting

Speech by Mark Rubinstein, IFC METROPOL

Meeting moderator Hawk Sunshine, IFC METROPOL

Committee Chairman Andrei Kruglov actively participated in the discussion