Gazprom, Brisa to Bid for Highways

Gazprom and Brisa, Portugal's biggest highway operator, will bid for two highway-management contracts in Russia valued at $2.9 billion.

Brisa-Auto Estradas de Portugal and units of Gazprom, including its pension fund manager, agreed to set up a group to bid for stretches of the Moscow-Minsk and Moscow-St. Petersburg highways, Guilherme Magalhaes, Brisa's executive director for Europe, said Thursday.
"These are very difficult projects as they involve working on stretches of highway that already exist," Magalhaes said.

The contract for the Moscow-St. Petersburg highway will involve widening and managing a stretch of the road and investing about 1.2 billion euros, Magalhaes said.
The other contract will require investment of 800 million euros for a stretch of about 30 kilometers of the toll road to Minsk.

The contract may last 30 to 40 years, and that period may be negotiated in bidders' proposals, he said.