The Russian gas giant confirmed that Shell had made a new proposal in negotiations over Gazprom’s participation in Sakhalin Energy, the company building a $20 billion (£10.2 billion) liquefied natural gas scheme in Eastern Siberia.

The project has been beset by claims and threats of prosecution from Rosprirodnadzor, the Russian environmental control agency, a campaign that is seen by Moscow energy analysts as calculated to weaken Shell’s negotiating position.

Sources within Moscow suggest that Gazprom will acquire 50 per cent plus one share of the Sakhalin Energy company, reducing Shell’s stake to 25 per cent, from 55 per cent. Mitsui and Mitsubishi, the current minority investors, would see their stakes reduced further.

Mounting pressure on Shell to concede control of Sakhalin Energy to Gazprom has coincided with nationalist sentiment. Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for President Vladimir Putin, yesterday said that the environment had changed and Russian companies no longer needed foreign help.

“Our companies have the opportunity to be owners by themselves, to attract finance and certain technologies. This changes the conditions for foreign investors. They won’t be so much owners, they will have opportunities as contractors and subcontractors,” Mr Peskov said.

“We understand that it is better to have a direct share but you have to understand these are Russian resources. No country in the world would want to give up its natural resources to foreigners.”

Existing agreements would be respected, he said, but he suggested that the contracts granting major concessions to companies, such as Shell, were a legacy of a past era. “In the 1990s, our country was in a poor economic state, we couldn’t develop energy by ourselves. We had to attract investors with extremely favourable conditions. Now the situation has changed drastically,” Mr Peskov said.

Shell confirmed yesterday that its chief executive, Jeroen van der Veer, had a meeting in Moscow on Friday with Alexei Miller, Gazprom’s chief executive, at which “Sakhalin-related issues were discussed”. The meeting, which was also attended by Viktor Khristenko, Russia’s Energy Minister, was described by a Shell spokesman as “positive”.

In Moscow, Gazprom said that Shell’s proposals were being analysed. “A decision will be taken in view of the existing problems at the Sakhalin-2 project, including ecological,” the Gazprom spokesman said.

Shell’s relationship with the Kremlin has been chilly since it signed a draft asset swap agreement with Gazprom last year, under which the Russian utility was to acquire a quarter of Sakhalin Energy in exchange for half of Zapolyarnoye, a large Western Siberian gasfield. A week after the agreement, Shell disclosed that Sakhalin’s costs had doubled to $20 billion.

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