Al Mazrouei said, via a series of tweets, "OPEC and OPEC+ played an important role in delivering market stability. The UAE Ministry of Energy and Industry firmly believes that a new agreement is essential to support a balanced and less volatile market."

The clash of oil titans Saudi Arabia and Russia sparked a 25% slump in crude prices on Monday, triggering panic selling on Wall Street and other equity markets that have already been badly hit by the impact of the coronavirus outbreak.

In late February, the Spanish energy companies Repsol SA and Endesa SA rejected a hefty deal on the purchase of 200 million cubic metres of LNG from the biggest US liquefied natural gas exporter Cheniere Energy Inc.

On Friday, Russia refused to sign a deal with OPEC and its non-OPEC allies on additional production cuts for the rest of 2020 to counter the fall in demand caused by the spreading coronavirus outbreak.

With oil prices tumbling, OPEC now wants to deepen its production cuts with non-OPEC allies by 1.5 million b/d for the full year 2020, instead of just the second quarter, sources said Thursday.

Construction works on the 55 Bcm/year Russian Nord Stream 2 pipeline linking Russia to Germany via the Baltic Sea were abruptly interrupted in late December after the US government implemented new sanctions threatening measures against contractors building the project.

“Conoravirus ... is a short-lived factor which is affecting oil prices ... There will be an OPEC (and non-OPEC) meeting, compensatory measures will be taken which will take the excess oil off the market and the oil price will rebound,” Fedun said.

Bulgaria imports 2.9 billion cubic meters of gas from Russia per year under a long-term contract valid through 2022.

Despite heavy lobbying by Saudi Arabia, the 23-country coalition of OPEC and non-OPEC producers has yet to agree on any plans to rein in crude oil production further.

Russian oil output stood at 11.29 million barrels per day (bpd) in February,