French power company Electricite de France SA (EDF) has just announced on 30 September that it may be acquiring a minority holding in Russian gas monopoly Gazprom’s South Stream gas pipeline project, news agencies reported. Some reports have indicated that the EDF stake could possibly be as much as 10%, which the company would assume in November. Gazprom retains a 50 percent shareholding in the South Stream project, with Italian oil and gas company ENI holding the remaining 50 percent of stakes. If EDF takes a 10% stake, then each company will retain 45 percent of shareholdings for the project. A spokesman for Gazprom said talk of a deal with EDF by the end of November was premature, though he confirmed that Gazprom will hold talks with EDF next month. He also declined to say how big EDF’s stake would be. ENI and Gazprom can do this on our own, but clearly having a third partner of EDF’s stature will make things easier, spokesman Sergei Kuprianov was quoted by the press as saying. ENI declined to comment. In a press release, it said ENI CEO Paolo Scaroni had met Gazprom Chairman Alexei Miller in Moscow 29 September and they had discussed bringing a possible third partner into the South Stream project.