TNK-BP to Carry Out Gas Utilisation Programme

British-Russian venture TNK-BP is pressing ahead with a gas utilisation programme as the russian government threatens to punish oil firms for gas flaring, the firm's top executive said on Thursday.

"We have a programme of over $500 million approved by the board and could expand it potentially to $1 billion," TNK-BP's executive vice president for production, Sergei Brezitski, said of the plan that runs to 2010.

Brezitski said that of the $500 million, some $345 million would go to OrenburgNeft, TNK-BP's unit in the southern Urals, and over $200 million would be invested in West Siberia to increase gas utilisation to 95 percent from 66-73 percent now.