Russia will use some of the vast reserves to supply gas to Europe

Russia will use some of the vast reserves in the Shtokman fields to supply gas to Europe. Gazprom was seeking to reassure European customers that Russia would develop one of the largest offshore natural gas reserves in the world. Europe increasingly depends on Russian gas, buying more than a quarter of its total from Gazprom, the state-owned energy monopoly. Energy analysts said Europe, which imported around 330 billion cubic meters of gas in 2005, would require an additional 200 billion cubic meters per year by 2015.
Instead of an earlier plan to convert much of the gas from Shtokman into liquefied natural gas for shipment to Europe and other markets, much of it will now allocated to Nord Stream, which includes Gazprom and two German partners, E.ON Ruhrgas and Wintershall.