Modi and Putin hailed what they termed a “strategic partnership” at their Kremlin meeting on Thursday and pledged to boost business ties, with the Indian leader signaling progress on defense projects to ensure his country upgrades its weapons capability.

“Gazprom has useful and precious experience in various fields of the gas industry and can provide them to the NIGC,” Shana quoted him saying.

Beijing has indicated it could ultimately form a separate pipeline monopoly to encourage the development of China’s domestic natural gas industry which has so far been limited by CNPC’s stranglehold over the majority of the country’s pipeline network.

Gazprom’s “export policy has always been balanced and adaptive,” says spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov. He argues that European customers have become more interested, not less, in Russian gas, given Europe’s own decline in production.

I think Russia would be happy if the Southern Corridor did not happen, but I think at this point it's a fait accompli – it will happen. The Shah Deniz project has been approved and a final investment decision has been taken. Work is progressing on it and on the Trans Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP) that will cross Turkey and go on into Europe. The present issues between Turkey and Russia will only strengthen the resolve for completing the Southern Corridor. The question will be how much the Southern Corridor can expand beyond the currently planned quantities of 10 bcm to Europe and the 6 bcm to Turkey. It is also a question of whether there will be other gas sources that can put gas into that pipeline system.

U.S. Rig Count is down 9 rigs from last week to 700, with oil rigs down 3 to 538, and gas rigs down 6 to 162.

In 2015, Gazprom increased market share in Europe and Turkey by one percentage point, from 30.2% to 31.2%,

Russian Economy Minister Alexei Ulyukayev put it more bluntly, telling reporters in Brussels that blocking Nord Stream-2 would be "a shot in the foot" especially for Gazprom's European clients.

Since March 2014, Iran has increased its gas output by 200 million cubic meters per day. The managing director of the National Iranian Oil Company has said that by boosting 100 million cubic meters per day of gas in the current year, Iran is ready to outpace Qatar, because seven phases of the South Pars will come on stream this year.

The $2.5 billion East-West pipeline connects Galkynysh and other fields in the east of the country to its Caspian coast, from where a proposed Trans-Caspian link could deliver gas to Azerbaijan and then to Europe.