BLOOMBERG - OPEC said its oil output fell to the lowest in a year last month amid reduced supplies from Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, suggesting global markets may tighten sharply later this year.

PLATTS - "It cannot be the case that Nord Steam 2 means that Ukraine no longer has any significance in transiting [Russian] gas," Merkel said after a meeting with Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko.

GAZPROM - Nord Stream 2 AG received the second permit required for the construction and operation of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in the Finnish Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), thereby completing the permitting procedure in Finland.

REUTERS - GAIL renegotiated the terms of a long-term 2.5 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) liquefied natural gas (LNG) purchase deal with Russia’s Gazprom in January.

PLATTS - Maintaining a long-term oil management alliance with Russia and other allies will allow OPEC producers to react more quickly to changing fundamentals and stabilize the market,

PLATTS - Russian flows of natural gas into Germany and Slovakia combined rose above 400 million cu m/d in each of the final three days of Week 14 for the first time on almost five months as Brotherhood flows increased, data from S&P Global Platts Analytics showed.

GAZPROM - from January 1 through April 8, 2018, Gazprom had supplied Austria with 3.7 billion cubic meters of gas, a rise of 77.2 per cent compared to the same period of last year.

PLATTS - Russia is willing to work with the OPEC coalition indefinitely to regulate global oil supplies and has advocated the creation of a new global body to monitor crude markets, the country's energy minister said.

PLATTS - OPEC oil output in March fell to 32.14 million b/d, its lowest level in 11 months, led by declines in seven out of the 14 member countries,

U.S.DT - The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), in consultation with the Department of State, today designated seven Russian oligarchs and 12 companies they own or control, 17 senior Russian government officials, and a state-owned Russian weapons trading company and its subsidiary, a Russian bank.