Owners of the world’s largest undeveloped offshore gas field — the 3.87-trillion-cubic-metre Shtokman in the Barents Sea — have begun screening their candidates for a tender of carriers for liquefied natural gas, or LNG.

“We’ll be having a meeting with (Shtokman Development Co.) in a few weeks,” a shipping source in Oslo told Scandoil.com.

An article in Scandinavian Oil-Gas Magazine had written that Shtokman AG’s majority owner Gazprom at one point wanted up to 20 LNG carriers. Now, technology and gas prices might bet the determining factor for overall order sizes.

“We’re very interested, but not if (Gazprom) only wants the most-stripped-down of ships,” the source said.

A range of mostly Norwegian LNG shipping players are understood to be poised to show their designs and enter their bids. Some, like Oslo-based Höegh LNG already offer what Gazprom wants: a proven record in the arctic and regular ship-to-LNG-jetty and ship-to-ship cargo transfers for gas.

Another LNG source says Gazprom is now looking at LNG as insurance against the possibility the Baltic States and Sweden could strangle Shtokman’s Nord Stream pipeline to Europe in “environmental” red tape.

Sthokman is still key to billion-dollar plans to turn the Murmansk area of Northwest Russia into a major shipping hub. Scandoil.com affiliate _Scandinavian Oil-Gas Magazine updates the Shtokman project in this month’s addition.