"With regard to the cooperation with Saudi Arabia, the dialogue between our two countries is developing in a tangible way, whether in the framework of a multi-party structure or on a bilateral level," Novak was quoted as saying.

Russia’s president Vladimir Putin said there were no doubts that Turkish Stream will happen and work could start soon. He was speaking at a joint press conference with Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan August 9.

Gazprom's sales volume to its core ‘Europe and other’ markets in 1Q grew by 49% to 58.1bn m³, an increase of 19bn m³ on 39.1bn m³ in January-March 2015. Sales to former Soviet countries declined by 15.5% (by 2bn m³) to 10.9bn m³, while those in Russia declined more modestly to 75.4bn m³, just 6% or 4.9bn m³ less than in 1Q 2015.

Turkey is Gazprom's second biggest export market after Germany. In 2015 Gazprom exported about 27bn m3 of gas to Turkey. Currently Russian gas is exported to Turkey via the Blue Stream gas pipeline and the Trans Balkan gas pipeline.

Russia, Saudi Arabia and other major oil exporters met in Doha in April in a bid to stabilize global markets by putting caps on output. The effort collapsed as Saudi Arabia demanded that rival Iran join the pact. At the time, Iran had ruled out any limits as it ramped up production after the lifting of international sanctions.

During the visit, President Rouhani attended trilateral talks among Iran, Russia and Azerbaijan and conferred with his Russian and Azeri counterparts on expansion of trilateral cooperation in commerce, energy, telecommunications, environment, fight against terrorism, transportation and transit of goods.

"Not only willing to cooperate with Zarubezhneft Company as investor in the fields, we are also calling for fully benefiting from their state of art technology,"

Ramezani told the Panel of Prospect of Gas Industry in Next Half a Century that the deal is expect to prepare the condition for export and shipment of gas to West Europe.

Total E&P Russie, a 100% affiliate of Total group, has transferred a 20% participating interest in and the operatorship of the Production Sharing Agreement for the Development and Production of Oil in the Kharyaga Field (Kharyaga PSA) to Zarubezhneft-Production Kharyaga LLC, a subsidiary of Zarubezhneft JSC.

However, in conjunction with both lower oil prices and international sanctions, Russia has recently experienced five consecutive quarters of decline in GDP, representing that country's deepest economic downturn since 2008-09.