text: Gazprom rises to 2,901.48 rbls at auction . MOSCOW 1996-08-29 A stake of 10 million shares in Russian gas monopoly RAO Gazprom was sold at auction on Thursday at an average 2,901.48 roubles a share , up from 2,891.00 roubles a week ago , the Federal Securities Corporation ( FFK ) said . Starting price at the auction was 2,746 roubles a share and the 40 lots sold for between 2,840 and 2,998 roubles a share , the FFK said in a statement . The stake represented 0.042 percent of Gazprom 's capital . The FFK said that since auctions began , 139.75 million shares , equivalent to 0.59 percent of Gazprom , have changed hands . Gazprom , Russia 's biggest company by market capitalisation , has massive reserves and potentially huge earnings . However , its 23.6 billion shares are highly illiquid and management permission is required to sell them . Gazprom has recently tightened these rules , making it harder for shareholders to sell to whoever they want , when they want . The company has organised regular auctions of its shares to create an orderly market in the paper . At the first auction on March 6 , shares sold for an average 406.6 roubles each , and prices have been rising steadily since then , but the rise in price this week and last was much less than in previous auctions . On the Russian Trading System , Gazprom shares rose 25 percent on Thursday to $ 0.375 from $ 0.300 , after falling by over a third earlier this week . -- Artyom Danielyan , Moscow Newsroom , +7095 941 8520