Gazprom disbands the Department of 337 (formerly project management Department), has informed Agency “Interfax” with reference to sources in the industry. This was confirmed by two employees of Gazprom and the head of this Department Leonid Chugunov.
According to Chugunova, in “there is a routine restructuring” and all the projects will be implemented “in time”. Department staff will continue to perform their duties, he added. The official representative of “Gazprom” declined to comment.
The project management Department was established in 2009. He oversaw the construction of the pipeline “southern stream” which should pass under the Black sea bypassing Ukraine. After December 2014, he was replaced by “Turkish stream”, the Department switched to this project.
According to two sources close to the Department, it has nearly hundreds of employees. Monday, August 22, they received a notice of discontinuance of an entire division. Employees have two months to find a new job, told the interlocutors . According to them, the decision was a complete surprise. It was expected that in the course of the year may be some reorganization, but the complete elimination of the Department was not reported, said one of the sources. Part of the staff of the abolished Department have the chance to work in other divisions of the monopoly, but some will be forced to go, says another source.
Two months to find a new job is to “put [the law] procedures,” said Chugunov. He did not rule out that he will work in another structure of “Gazprom”, but details were not specified.
In the Central office of “Gazprom” — 24 Department. According to the report of “Gazprom” under RAS for the second quarter of 2016, the monopoly works 24,87 thousand employees. In December 2015, “Gazprom” has closed one of the offices of the Department 337 — the office for the coordination of East projects under the direction of Victor Timoshilov. The Department worked 20. Some of them are employed in other divisions of “Gazprom” in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Reform “Gazprom”
Over the last few years, Gazprom had a few cases of reorganization of departments. So, in 2012 the company almost completely disbanded the prospective development Department, headed by Vlada Rusakova (now she heads the gas in the direction of “Rosneft”) . In July 2015, was split into several departments financial-economic bloc of “Gazprom” under the leadership of Vice-President of Board of monopoly Andrey Kruglov. Kruglov has maintained a position on the Board of “Gazprom” from his former Department was allocated to Treasury under the baton of Alexander dushko, the financial and economic Department under the management of Alexandra Ivannikova and management Department, corporate expense, which is headed by Mikhail Sirotkin.
According to one source , the last half of the year 337, the Department oversaw work on the project “Turkish stream” and participated in the negotiations with the participants of the project “South stream”, which still remain unresolved issues. For example, the contractor of the offshore part of South stream” the Italian Saipem trying to sue the “Gazprom” €759 million penalty for the early termination of the contract and the work already done.
Talks on Turkish stream” was not going smoothly, and at the end of 2015, was terminated because of the worsening relations between Moscow and Ankara after Turkish air force shot down a Russian su-24 bomber. They resumed just recently — August 11, when in Petersburg took place the meeting of the presidents of Russia and Turkey of Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Vladimir Putin. It was originally planned to build four gas pipeline at 15.75 billion cubic meters of gas a year each. But now it is only one tube. The resumption of the second line is possible only after receiving assurances from the European Commission (it is expected that from Turkey the gas will go to the border with Greece, said the Minister of energy Alexander Novak.
The disbandment of the project management Department (Department 337) due to the fact that the construction of the pipeline “South stream” finally given up, says the Deputy Director of the national energy security Fund Alexei Grivach. In his opinion, “Gazprom” though late, but gets rid of the excess functions inside, redistributing human resources. According to Grivach, Chugunova Department was responsible mainly for works on construction of the pipeline on the land part of Europe. But the implementation of the offshore part of the Dutch was in charge of the company South Stream Transport. He believes that the functions of the Department to work on the project “Turkish stream” can take on another unit of “Gazprom”.
