Policymakers always worry about Russia having too much market share of European gas, but from my point of view Russia needs Europe a lot more than Europe needs Russia. The reason for that is that gas has been losing market share in Russia and in Ukraine. Russia’s projects to straddle across to Asia are not progressing so well and also its LNG projects are not progressing quickly. So really the only game in town is Europe, particularly from a price perspective. However, that means that their dependency on Europe is growing so policymakers do not need to worry about Russia.

Iran plans to double its Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) production in the post-sanctions era, Deputy Director of International Affairs for Marketing and Crude Oil Operation in the National Iranian Oil Company Safar-Ali Karamati said.

BP PLC, on behalf of the Shah Deniz consortium, has let a $1.5-billion contract for the transport and installation of the deeper water subsea production systems for Shah Deniz Stage 2 offshore Azerbaijan to the BOS Shelf LLC, Saipem Contracting Netherlands BV, and Star Gulf FZCO consortium.

On Friday, however, Export-Import Bank of China and China Development Bank signed two 15-year loans, for €9.34bn ($10.7bn) and Rmb9.76bn ($1.5bn) on Friday, according to regulatory statements from Yamal LNG.

If this price drop does happen, then Norway will be caught in the crossfire, as its production is more expensive than Gazprom's. Further, Gazprom has already developed the giant Bovanenkovo field in the Yamal Peninsula, where output has been curtailed as export markets and Gazprom's own domestic demand have have not required the additional gas. This means it is in a position to bring more cheap gas to market at little additional cost beyond transport. For Norway, however, adding more production capacity entails more capital expenditure.

U.S. Rig Count is down 5 rigs from last week to 415, with oil rigs down 4 to 328, gas rigs down 1 to 86, and miscellaneous rigs unchanged at 1. Canadian Rig Count is down 1 rig from last week to 36, with oil rigs up 1 to 11, gas rigs down 2 to 24, and miscellaneous rigs unchanged at 1.

China’s falling oil output and sliding U.S. production may help rebalance a market struggling to recover from the worst price crash in a generation

American LNG will be part of the approach towards diversification of sources of gas in Europe, in contrast to projects like Nord Stream 2 or the revived South Stream, which she said are not real sources of diversification.

Russian state-owned oil and gas giant Gazprom is currently working to create a liquefied natural gas (LNG) distribution hub in Bahrain. The hub will be meant to intake LNG from various sources, including Russia.

Gazprom reported the average production cost of natural gas in 2015 at ₽1643 per 1000 cubic meters (mcm) or $27.09/mcm or $0.84/MMBtu. The corresponding numbers for 2014 are ₽1470/mcm, $38.73/mcm and $1.21/MMBtu. The cost in US dollars is affected by the devaluation of Russian ruble. The average US dollar rate in 2015 was ₽60.66 compared with ₽37.97 in 2014.