Brent crude oil, the international benchmark, has fallen 40 per cent over the past year, decimating the budgets of Opec’s weaker members like Angola and Venezuela. The price crash has slowed the growth of US shale, Canada’s tar sands and other sources of high-cost oil but the market remains oversupplied by at least 1m barrels a day.

If current production remains unchanged at 31.5 million barrels a day, markets will still be oversupplied by 700,000 barrels a day in 2016—though that would be less than the glut of 1.8 million a barrel a day OPEC estimates for this year.

“There are no geographical boundaries for profitability,” Nylund said in the interview in Kristiansund on the coast of central Norway. “When you work with solutions, optimizations, adjustments here and there, you see that the cost level comes down.”

“Lower activity in the oil sector is having a damping effect on growth prospects for most sectors, while the level of activity is expected to be sustained by rising growth in public investment,” the central bank said in the report.

В ходе обсуждения европейских инфраструктурных проектов Панагиотис Скурлетис заявил, что греческая сторона не подписывала обращение министров ряда европейских стран относительно проекта третьей и четвертой ниток газопровода «Северный поток – 2», которое было направлено в адрес Еврокомиссии в конце ноября.

Правительственный комитет по делам Евросоюза принял решение о том, что Чехия не присоединится к протестному письму 7 стран Центральной Европы против строительства двух новых веток газопровода "Северный поток".

В 2015 году спрос французских потребителей на российский газ активно растет. За 11 месяцев «Газпром» экспортировал в республику 8,7 млрд куб. м газа. Это почти на 32% больше, чем за аналогичный период 2014 года (6,6 млрд куб. м).

Gazprom has already spent €1.8bn on purchasing physical pipe for the first and second “strings” - or lines, of pipe to be laid under the Black Sea. Pipe, delivered by Germany’s Europipe and Russia’s United Metallurgical Company (OMK) under the first string contract, signed in January 2014, is now largely stashed on the wharves of the Bulgarian port of Varna. The fate of pipe ordered for the second string, under contracts placed in March 2014, is not known.

OMV and Gazprom are two of the shareholders in the contentious Nord Stream-2 expansion project. BASF, E.ON, ENGIE, and Shell are the four other stakeholders.

Norway traditionally vies with Russia to be the EU’s top gas supplier, providing about 30 per cent of import demand. In terms of energy security, EU officials hail Norway as a model of stability compared with the political and commercial risks associated with Russia and Algeria.