Underground sites are slated to hold about 130 million barrels, which would account for nearly a quarter of the 550 million-barrel SPR target set by Beijing for 2020, according to local media and analysts.

CNPC said the entire pipeline project is expected to be completed and operational by the end of 2018. Construction of the Chinese section began in June 2015, while construction of the Russian section began in September 2014.

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.

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.

OAO NOVATEK announced today the signing of binding definitive agreements as part of a transaction for selling an equity stake in the Yamal LNG project to China’s Silk Road Fund (“SRF”).

Saudi Aramco, the kingdom's state oil giant, is seeking to borrow $4.7 billion from banks to refinance capital used to build a refinery in collaboration with China's Sinopec, three sources with knowledge of the matter said on Tuesday.

By 2035 global energy consumption increases by 37% from today’s levels with virtually all (96%) the growth in non-OECD countries and more than half coming from India and China.

Sinopec Corp (0386.HK), Asia's largest refiner, and Chinese state trader Zhuhai Zhenrong Corp will together lift around 505,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude from Iran in 2016, the same as this year when they took roughly half of the Islamic Republic's total exports, the sources said.

Rosneft received advance payments for oil supplies worth more than $15bn in the third quarter — the first large-scale financing that the state-controlled Russian group has secured since western sanctions were imposed upon it.

For China, the opportunity to re-negotiate existing liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply contracts with Shell, which combined with BG would supply around 30 percent of its imports by 2017, comes at an ideal time because the world's top energy consumer faces a large surfeit over the next five years.