PLATTS - Russia's Gazprom and five European energy companies are committed to fully financing Russia's 55 Bcm/year Nord Stream 2 natural gas link to Germany if no external financing is raised

REUTERS - Germany will chose where to build a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal by the end of 2018 as a gesture to the United States which wants to ship more gas to Europe, the economy minister said.

PLATTS - "A tremendous amount of LNG will be exported to Poland," Trump said during a joint news conference with Duda. "We're giving them a pretty good price. They're buying a lot of it. That's gonna be great."

PLATTS - Moscow also hopes to have its 55 Bcm/year Nord Stream 2 pipeline and its 31.5 Bcm/year TurkStream link ready to flow gas to Europe by the end of 2019, leaving only limited volumes for transit via Ukraine.

PLATTS - In a meeting with Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak in Moscow, US Energy Secretary Rick Perry reiterated US opposition to the expansion of the Nord Stream pipeline from Russia, claiming it would hurt European allies and distort energy markets.

GAZPROM - The offshore pipelay vessel Solitaire started the pipelay for the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline in the Gulf of Finland.

GAZPROM - the TURKSTREAM project was going according to schedule. Specifically, the deep-water pipelaying for the offshore part of the gas pipeline’s first string had been completed in the Black Sea along with the construction of the second string in Russia’s exclusive economic zone.

FT - The German official welcomed an agreement reached earlier this month between the Caspian littoral states — Russia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan — on a legal framework for sharing the Caspian, the world’s largest inland body of water.

PLATTS - "I have not seen this bill, we need to study it from a legal point of view, but based on what the media has written about it, this is, in my opinion an absurd bill that offsets all market rules," Novak told journalists, Prime reported.

REUTERS - “The project will definitely be financed. It is important for Gazprom and Russia currently has a high liquidity in euros,” Paul Corcoran, the Nord Stream 2 CFO, told Welt am Sonntag in an interview.