VIENNA: The CEO of Austrian oil and gas group OMV and Austria’s finance minister will visit St. Petersburg on April 1, an OMV spokesman said, as the company seeks to reach a deal on an asset swap with Russia’s Gazprom.

The companies have been working for months on a swap agreement under which OMV would take a stake in the Urengoy gas field in Siberia, but no details have emerged on what assets OMV — central Europe’s biggest energy group — might offer in return.

OMV CEO Rainer Seele, who said last month that due diligence for the deal would take several months, will be accompanied on his Russia trip by Finance Minister Hans Joerg Schelling, a spokeswoman for Schelling confirmed.

Seele is relying heavily on the swap to help OMV to lower production costs and has said he has no Plan B.

A source close to OMV said that the finance minister’s attendance suggests that progress might have been made in the talks about future cooperation.

Russia’s energy minister has said the swap could include OMV oil and gas fields “in third countries” or infrastructure or energy projects in Austria.

OMV has upstream operations in the North Sea, Romania, Austria, Australia, New Zealand, the UAE, Tunisia, Gabon, Kazakhstan, Namibia and Madagascar, as well as idled operations in Libya and Yemen.

It is in the process of taking over gas trading company EconGas, has a majority stake in the Central European Gas Hub (CEGH) in Austria, owns gas storage facilities in Austria and refineries in Austria, Germany and Romania.

It wants to sell its Petrol Ofisi petrol station business in Turkey and is in the process of selling a minority stake in Gas Connect Austria, though it has ruled out Gazprom as a buyer.

OMV has said maximum output from the Urengoy area in which it is interested is expected to be 60,000 to 80,000 barrels of oil equivalent (boe) per day over the next 20 years.

OMV’s current total output is about 309,000 boe per day.