Russian gas giant Gazprom signed a contract with a Danish energy company on Monday to supply the northern European country with Russian natural gas, the Russian company said.

Under the deal, Denmark's DONG Energy company will buy one billion cubic meters of gas every year for 20 years starting in 2011 and the gas will be delivered through the North-European gas pipeline, now being built under the Baltic Sea.

The two companies also signed an agreement on gas supplies by DONG Energy to the Gazprom Marketing and Trading company, Gazprom's trading arm in the European markets. The gas will come from the North Sea and be supplied to Britain beginning in 2007 for 15 years. The planned volume of supply is 600 million cubic meters a year.

Russia is the world's largest natural gas producer and provides about a quarter of the gas consumed in the European Union, most of it sent through pipelines that cross Ukraine.

Source: Xinhua