Kommersant: Alexey Miller may leave Gazprom

Let us note that Miller has been the head of Gazprom for almost 20 years. This is the longest term among the current heads of state-owned companies. Only the president of Transneft Nikolay Tokarev, who has held this position since 2007, and the head of Rosneft, Igor Sechin, who headed the company in 2012, but has served as chairman of the board of directors since 2004, can be compared with him.

This is not the first time rumors of Miller's possible resignation have surfaced. This year, they intensified due to the past personnel reshuffles among governors, officials and heads of state-owned companies. In addition, this year Miller's associates who had worked for the company for many years left Gazprom. Also, the possible resignation of the head of Gazprom is associated with poor financial performance: the loss under IFRS for the nine months of 2020 amounted to 202 billion rubles against a profit of 1.1 trillion rubles in 2019.

According to Kommersant's sources, the completion of the construction of Nord Stream-2 should be the final point in Miller's career as head of Gazprom. This was one of the main goals of the company, set many years ago. Thanks to the project, Ukraine, through which 85% of Russian gas exports to Europe passed in the early 2000s, will become a “marginal route”.

At the same time, during the years of his leadership, Miller failed to divide Gazprom into two components - production and transport. Last year, this issue was raised at closed meetings with the former curator of the fuel and energy complex Dmitry Kozak. But the leadership of the monopoly, according to Kommersant's information, opposed it.