Halliburton, Gazprom join forces

HOUSTON, May 3 (UPI) -- U.S. oil contractor Halliburton announced it signed an oil and natural gas technology deal with Russian natural gas company Gazprom.

Halliburton said it signed a strategic cooperation deal for the development of new oil and gas technologies for exploration and production.

"This agreement provides an opportunity for Gazprom International and Halliburton to mutually benefit from the implementation of these technologies and to build a closer strategic working relationship," Brady Murphy, Halliburton's senior vice president of business development for the Eastern Hemisphere, said in a statement.

Halliburton employees, under the terms of the deal, will provide technical training and deploy new technology to Gazprom. The technologies included in the measure are for so-called tight gas, deepwater exploration and software applications.

Gazprom International Managing Director Valeriy Gulev said the deal would be mutually beneficial.

"We expect that cooperation with Halliburton will extend our engineering capability, improve Gazprom International's competitive performance, and broaden the range of our possibilities in the areas of exploration and development of hydrocarbons," he said in a statement.