Reuters recently reported that Gazprom signed a deal with Vietnam’s state-owned energy company, Petrovietnam, to explore four new offshore fields. Gazprom says that their joint venture company VietGazprom, which has been exploring a Vietnamese offshore deposit since 2000, will operate the new fields.

As Robert Amsterdam points out, this is just the latest example in a long string of new deals for Gazprom which has included such diverse countries as Bolivia, Nigeria, Libya, and others.  As the Financial Times recently reported, energy companies are beginning to see a strong future in “unconventional” energy sources – extracting oil and gas from non-traditional, smaller deposits (for example in the Congo). Gazprom is really showing itself to be a leader in this department.