Russia's state-owned gas giant Gazprom saw its profits drop some 70 percent in the first two months of this year.

Russia's Federal Customs Service reported the decrease in Gazprom's exports revenues on April 7 and said profits totaled some $7.4 billion in January-February.

The Customs Service said gas exports declined from 37.4 billion cubic meters (bcm) in January-February 2014, for both foreign and CIS exports, to 27.5 bcm in the first two months of 2015, of which 18.7 bcm went to countries outside the CIS and 8.8 bcm to CIS countries.

The Customs Service also noted that the average price of gas dropped from some $334 per 1,000 cubic meters in January-February 2014 to some $269 for the same period this year.



Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on April 7 that President Vladimir Putin would meet with Gazprom chief Aleksei Miller on April 8.

Russian news agency TASS reported the agenda had not been announced. Peskov said the Putin-Miller meeting would address "gas issues, which I am not going to announce."

Based on reporting by TASS