A TOP Kremlin official has warned western oil giants their money is no longer needed for the development of Russia's huge energy reserves.

President Vladimir Putin's deputy spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia's decision to exclude US and European companies from the development of a massive Arctic field earlier this year would not be the last.

While Russia will honour deals struck in the 1990s when the country was economically enfeebled, the days of offering foreign firms such generous terms are over, he said.

Instead, oil majors will be allowed to offer technical assistance as subcontractors to Russian companies. They will only be given stakes in Russian fields if they have significant assets of their own to swap in exchange.

Peskov's warning was made at a Kremlin briefing on Friday night. It will come as a huge blow to western giants such as Exxon, Royal Dutch Shell and France's Total, which are struggling to secure new reserves as energy-rich governments freeze out foreign players.

And it could leave BP, which is involved in a major Russian joint venture with TNK, in a difficult position over future projects.

Peskov said: 'In the year 2006 we don't anymore need to attract western companies to explore our gas. We have lots and lots of money and we don't know what to do with it.

'Yes we are extremely interested in attracting them on a mutually beneficial basis. But of course they would prefer just to come here, to be an owner of a gas field, to pump it out from the hole, to export it abroad and that's it.

But we are not interested in that anymore.' Firms including Total and Norway's Statoil spent months preparing bids for participation in the vast Shtokman field, which contains 4.7 trillion cubic yards of gas, only for Gazprom to announce in the summer that it would develop the field alone.

Peskov also renewed the Kremlin's attack on Shell, which is under fire over alleged environmental violations on the Pacific island of Sakhalin.

'Have you heard at least one time when Shell denied the existence of ecological problems?' he said. 'Can you give me an example? No. Because they really have ecological problems and they really have violated some paragraphs of their licence.' Peskov claimed Shell had shifted one pipeline from the agreed route, damaging dozens of rivers in the process.