Natural gas faces growing competition from coal and renewable energy sources at a time when its potential demand growth is slowing down, an International Energy Agency official said. “The last large contracts for [LNG] were signed in 2014 just before oil prices collapsed. We believe it is still competitive, but there are risks,” said Laszlo Varro, who heads IEA’s gas, coal and power markets division.

New corridors along the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline through the Baltic Sea to European markets should be in service by 2019, Russia's Gazprom said.

Argentina and China have respectively drilled more than 275 and 200 wells targeting shale plays over the past 2 years, providing each country with the potential to significantly increase production of shale gas and tight oil.

U.S. Rig Count is up 2 rigs from last week to 859, with oil rigs down 3 to 628, gas rigs up 5 to 228, and miscellaneous rigs unchanged at 3.

Share sales by US oil and gas companies have slowed sharply in recent months, in a sign of the tightening financial pressures on the industry following the fall in crude prices.

According to a recent report from Swift Worldwide Resources, over 150,000 jobs in the global oil and gas industry have been cut since oil prices began to tumble last summer.

States are attempting to get their hands on long-term gas supply contracts with the Russian natural gas exporter Gazprom and pave the way for a multi-commodity energy supplier business where they can influence end-user prices directly.

“Natural gas is a flexible, it's supply is abundant and diverse, its ranges of use are still expanding, it's supply is abundant and diverse, it's low carbon, clean burning, an ally to renewables such as solar and wind, and it makes economic sense.”

Russia could not provide Ukraine with the gas price discount it once had, days before new gas talks between Russia, Ukraine and the European Union.

The 13th Moscow International Oil and Gas Exhibition, MIOGE 2015, opened in Expocenter under the sunshine on the banks of the Moscow River in the Russian capital.