Moscow, 5 June 2019. Today, during the official visit of the President of the People’s Republic of China Xi Jinping to the Russian Federation, PAO NOVATEK (“NOVATEK” and/or the “Company”), Sinopec and Gazprombank signed Heads of Agreement (“Agreement”) on establishing a joint venture to market LNG and natural gas to end-customers in the People’s Republic of China.

The United States has strongly criticised Nord Stream 2, a 11 billion euro ($12.4 billion) project to build a gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, which opponents fear will undermine Ukraine’s gas transit revenues and increase the EU’s reliance on Russian gas.

This was up 8.7% month on month from April imports of 1.62 million mt, and 20.9% higher from a year earlier. About 94.5% of the Russian imports were ESPO blend, with just one cargo of 96,000-mt of Sokol.

Saudi Arabia produced 9.65 million barrels per day (bpd) of oil in May, a Saudi industry source said, a deeper cut than its target set by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies including Russia, a group known as OPEC+.

The production fall resulted mainly from the closure due to oil contamination of Russia’s Druzhba pipeline, which usually ships 1 million bpd, or 1 percent of global oil demand.

Argentina and Russia have set up a working group tasked with specifying the project on the construction of a nuclear power plant (NPP) in the Latin American country,

Russia’s recent oil output is below the 11.18 billion bpd target Moscow has pledged as part of an international deal among producers to curb production to support prices.

Russia’s state-owned gas giant Gazprom increased its first-quarter net profit by 44 per cent over the previous year as higher gas prices offset lower gas export volumes.

With the ceremonial launch of the nuclear-powered arctic ice breaker ‘Ural’ today, Russia’s nuclear energy giant, ROSATOM, has completed another step towards ensuring all-year round navigability of the Northern Sea Route (NSR).

"They still do not have permission from Russia to cross the border [after June 1] so the Kazakh company has decided to wait," a source at a major Ukrainian trading company said Tuesday. "No one knows exactly what's going to happen in June."