A spokesman for the company told the Sunday Tribune last week that Gazprom is "hopeful" of becoming involved in projects in Ireland as the gas provider expands its operational footprint.

The company is already reported to have run the rule over independent Irish gas provider Vayu, which was also being targeted by Cork-based SWS, which was itself acquired by Ion Equity for Euro110m in December.

"Our position is that we want to trade energy - not just gas, but power, coal, even carbon - in European markets as they are liberalised, " a Gazprom spokesman told the Sunday Tribune.

He added that calls last week by the EU's competition commissioner Neelie Kroes for greater liberalisation of gas and energy markets within the Union are welcomed by Gazprom as it will help the company extend its reach in new European markets using its existing UK model. He said that this will hopefully include Ireland.

"We will look at all projects, including power, on their business case merits and at this stage we are not ruling out anything, " said the spokesman.

A Gazprom executive said last week that the company, which is the world's biggest producer of natural gas, is considering buying stakes in western European power stations to boost revenues.

Gazprom is engaged in a pilot scheme in the UK, where it has signed a deal to provide gas and carbon emissions credits to International Power, which has a generation facility in Wales. In return, Gazprom is supplied with electricity from the power station.

It is considering similar deals in Belgium and the Netherlands.

Any move by Gazprom into the Irish market could be difficult. Despite being deregulated, significant competition has failed to emerge. The Economic and Social Research Institute has previously said that the ESB should be forced to sell power generation capacity equivalent to up to four power stations by 2010 in order to reduce its dominance in the market. Although the ESB had undertaken not to build any new power stations, it recently received the goahead to construct a Euro300m facility in Cork. The ESB will be forced to sell the electricity output to rivals.

Last year Northern Ireland electricity generator Viridian, which operates in the Republic as Energia, was sold to Bahrain-based buyout firm Arcapita Bank for Euro2.3bn. The ESB had also prepared a bid for Viridian but shelved it when it failed to obtain sufficient cabinet backing.

Last week it emerged that German energy company E.ON had criticised the Irish electricity market due to ESB's dominance and government interference. The company said the government would have to do more to attract investment in energy production.