Speaking at an energy conference in Ashgabat, Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin said Russia was proposing a new mechanism to safeguard global and regional energy security.

"A need has grown recently to develop effective and comprehensive tools to ensure global and regional energy security," he said.

Mr Sechin emphasised that "it is high time we drafted and adopted a new document, which would effectively take into account the interests of all participants." In this connection, the official cited  Russian-drafted conceptual approaches to a new legal framework of international cooperation in energy and a draft agreement on handling emergencies in transportation of energy resources and refined products.

Building an effective infrastructure for shipping hydrocarbons can rely on five important principles, he said.

First, a coordinated legal framework is required. The work on it can begin with signing relevant bilateral and multilateral international agreements.

"Considering the intensive development of offshore projects lately, it is especially important to regulate the legal status of many oil and gas assets in the Arctic and in the Caspian Sea. Without streamlining this issue with due account of national interests of all participating countries, new lucrative projects in the regions will be difficult to implement."

The second principle is to provide reliable resources for each project. With each energy project, developers should make a point of guaranteeing available resources and potential consumers. Moreover, even before the project is launched, its initiators have to conduct a feasibility study. The lack of a proper study would mean the project is politicised and its risks will be high for oil and gas producing and consuming nations alike.

The third principle, according to Mr Sechin, is to ensure a project's environmental and technological safety.

The fourth is to apply economically reasonable transit fees, ultimately derived from the amount of investment, which, in turn, should depend on the routes chosen and technical specifications of the project.

And finally, the fifth principle says that large projects are virtually impossible without long-term contracts for supply and shipment of hydrocarbons, stipulating fees that are bound to change according to pricing formulas agreed by the parties.

"Long-term contracts strongly guarantee stable supplies and employment of pipeline capacities, which suits all market participants," Mr Sechin said.

As an example, the official cited a number of projects Russia is implementing using the above principles - Nord Stream, South Stream, the Caspian Pipeline, the Burgas-Alexandroupolis pipeline, the second leg of the Baltic pipeline system, the second leg of the CPC project and the East Siberia-Pacific Ocean pipeline.

Mr Sechin also highlighted that all these projects are aimed at diversifying oil and gas supply routes. "We are certain of our projects' reliability and efficiency," he added.

"One can easily see that projects not using these principles are not economically sustained. They become sources of conflicts, and their planned consumers fall victim to political and ideological fights," Mr Sechin concluded.