Shell has already taken action to cut costs and reduce spending this year by $12 billion, but Tuesday’s announcement of a $33 billion target for next year is $2 billion below the company’s previous guidance.

“You also need a low cost structure and a strong balance sheet for a strong credit rating with good access to the debt markets,” Lance said. “A company like ours also needs to be able to react quickly to developments.”

Rhetoric and geopolitical ambitions can be self-defeating in that respect, as the natural gas sector tends to be dominated by grandiose infrastructure projects and ambitious themes that may not come to fruition.

US oil major Chevron said on Tuesday it planned to sell up to 1m metric tonnes of LNG a year to China Huadian Green Energy from 2020, ensuring 80 per cent of gas from its Gorgon and Wheatstone projects is committed in long-term contracts.

Gazprom and some utilities say Nord Stream-2 is the most pragmatic solution to shoring up Europe's energy security. The European Commission has said it is assessing its legality.

Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, became the latest senior politician to criticise plans for a new pipeline bringing Russian gas to Germany, saying it would undermine the EU’s goal of reducing energy dependence on Moscow.

U.S. Rig Count is unchanged from last week at 709, with oil rigs up 17 to 541, and gas rigs down 17 to 168.

In theory, the European Union is pursuing a single energy market, based on the needs of all 28 EU nations. It is also meant to be united against Russia as it seeks to defend the interests of Ukraine following Moscow's seizure of Crimea in March last year.

Nord Stream-2 is still supposed to meet a hypothetical rise of EU gas demand, and also to deal with the abandonment of other projects, like the Nabucco project, which was largely abandoned in 2012, the South Stream project abandoned in December 2014, as well as the ill-fated Turkish Stream project, held hostage in the Russian-Turkish war of words that has followed the shooting down of a Russian warplane by the Turkish Airforce.

The Nord Stream II pipeline would stretch 1,200 kilometers across the Baltic Sea, from Vyborg on the Russian coast to Griefswald, Germany. Once completed, it would have the capacity to transport 27.5 billion cubic meters of gas directly to Germany, circumventing Ukraine and the Central and Eastern European states. Russia’s Gazprom would own 50% of the project, and France’s Engie, Austria’s OMV, Royal Dutch Shell, and Germany’s BASF and E.ON each would own a 10% share.