A senior Gazprom official has declared that a German company will become a shareholder of the South Stream gas transit pipeline together with the Rusisan energy giant, Italy's Eni, and France's EDF.

"I have no doubts that a German company will become a shareholder," the head of Gazprom's foreign projects department, Stanislav Tsygankov, said Monday as cited by RIA Novosti.

Italian company Eni's CEO Paolo Scaroni recently said he believed German company Wintershall may be interested in taking a stake in the South Stream project.

Under agreements reached earlier this year, French utility EDF is expected to take between a 10% and 20% stake in South Stream from Eni's stake by the end of the year.

As early as April 2010, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced that the French company EDF will also become a partner in the South Stream project.

On Monday Tsygankov hinted that Gazprom would be unwilling to reduce its stake in South Stream below 50%.

He declined to name the German company with which Gazprom has been holding talks for South Stream. "It is one of our partners," he said, declining to elaborate. "We are not yet saying that we are to offer our stake."

Gazprom and Eni hold 50% each in the marine section of South Stream; according to Tsygankov, however, the accession of EDF and a potential German partner will lead to a reduction of Eni's stake, while Gazprom will keep its 50%.

"We have an understanding that this will be a European project with no

[other] dominant participants but Gazprom. I think this will be a decent option for Eni. I think they are not ready to be a leader [in the project]," he said.

The South Stream pipe will start near Novorosiysk on the Russian Black Sea coast, and will go to Bulgaria's Varna; the underwater section will be 900 km long.

In Bulgaria, the pipe is supposed to split in two - one pipeline going to Greece and Southern Italy, and another one going to Austria and Northern Italy through Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia.

The project was initiated by Gazprom and the Italian company Eni, and the French company EdF is also planned to join as a shareholder. It is seen as a competitor to the EU-sponsored project Nabucco seeking to bring non-Russian gas to Europe.

At their meeting on Saturday in St. Petersburg, Berlusconi and Putin welcomed the idea of having German companies join in as shareholders. There is no indication as to how the joining of RWE or some other German company would re-apportion the stakes.

The ownership of the Russian-Bulgarian joint company to build and manage the Bulgarian South Stream section will be split 50-50%.

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