BLOOMBERG - As Saudi Arabia led OPEC’s output cuts this year to shrink a global glut, it’s lost out on market share in the world’s biggest energy consumer. Russia in September retained the top Chinese supplier spot for the seventh straight month, while the kingdom was third.

PLATTS - The quality of Russia's key Urals crude exports towards Europe will continue to fall next year as more of the country's low-sulfur oil flows are diverted eastward to China, Russian national oil pipeline operator Transneft warned.

Rosneft as a member of Sakhalin-1 Consortium successfully completed drilling of the world's longest well from Orlan platform at Chaivo field in the Sea of Okhotsk. The length of the well with horizontal completion is 15000 m which currently is a world record. This is a supercomplex well with DDI (Directional drilling index) of 8.0 and 14,129 m stepout.

Gazprom's natural gas supplies to western Europe edged up by 3% year on year in the third quarter of 2017, according to an S&P Global Platts analysis of Gazprom data, as Russian gas deliveries to its core markets continue to outpace last year's levels.

IMF - A cyclical recovery in Russia is gaining pace after a two-year recession, with growth expected to reach around 2 percent this year, supported by higher oil prices and easier domestic financial conditions. Nevertheless, growth is likely to remain low in the medium-term, due to demographics, unaddressed structural bottlenecks as well as enduring sanctions.

FT - The original deal with Opec’s de facto leader Saudi Arabia, brokered by Mr Novak and Russian president Vladimir Putin, reduced oil production from participating countries by 1.8m barrels a day and helped push the price of benchmark Brent Crude above $60 a barrel this week for the first time in more than two years.

FT - Russia has come to the aid of Venezuela with a deal to restructure $3.15bn of sovereign debt, allowing Caracas to meet obligations to other creditors and underlining Moscow’s role as the crisis-hit country’s main foreign backer.

Product exports have grown significantly over the past several years and are expected to continue to grow as Russian refineries add capacity to produce more high-quality products.

The Russian economy is recovering from a full-blown crisis caused by a massive drop in prices for oil, its key export, and by economic sanctions imposed by the West over Moscow’s role in the Ukraine crisis.

Average growth across the EBRD region is seen at 3.3 per cent this year, a rise of 0.9 percentage points against the previous forecast from May, and compared with growth of just 1.9 per cent in 2016. The economy in Russia, the largest in the EBRD region and a major influence on output in many other EBRD countries of operations, has now pulled out of recession after a cumulative contraction of 3 per cent over the last two years. Russia is expected to see GDP growth of 1.8 and 1.7 per cent in 2017 and 2018, respectively.