Shtokman field
The Shtokman field is one of the world’s largest natural gas discoveries. It sits offshore in the Barents Sea, about 600 kilometers north of the Kola Peninsula, in water roughly 320–340 meters deep. The field holds about 3.8 trillion cubic meters of gas and more than 37 million tons of condensate. It was discovered in 1988 and named after Soviet geophysicist Vladimir Shtokman.
Development began in the 1990s with Gazprom and various Western partners, but the project faced repeated delays and changes. In 2005–2007 Gazprom signed deals with TotalEnergies and Statoil (now Equinor) to move the project forward, and a joint company, Shtokman Development AG, was created in 2008. However, due to LNG oversupply, weak gas prices, and Arctic challenges, the project was postponed in 2010 and put on hold in 2012. Statoil handed back its shares, and Gazprom delayed the first phase to at least 2014. In 2019 the Shtokman project was postponed indefinitely and Shtokman Development AG was closed.
Originally, the plan was to ship gas as LNG to the United States, but the strategy shifted toward exporting gas to Europe via a pipeline from Shtokman to Murmansk and then to Volkhov, with an onshore LNG plant planned near Teriberka. The project’s estimated development costs have ranged from about $12 billion to $20 billion. The field’s license is held by Gazprom Shelf Dobycha, a Gazprom subsidiary, and the planned ownership for the development company was Gazprom 51%, TotalEnergies 25%, and Equinor 24%, with Gazprom to take full control after Phase One. As of now, the Shtokman field remains undeveloped.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 11:42 (CET).