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.

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.

A spokesman for the US oil and gas producer confirmed it had sold its 50 per cent stake in the venture, which is focused on the far north-west of Russia. Rosneft, the Russian state oil company, also sold its stake in the asset last week, in a deal that valued the business at about $150m-$200m, according to one person familiar with the matter.

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 additional volumes are roughly what Gazprom has been piping to the EU through Ukraine, raising concerns that the new route would allow Russia to strip Kiev of much of its remaining economic leverage and an important source of income.

The product of Turkey’s far-sighted, strategic energy partnership with Azerbaijan, TANAP will initially transport 16 bcm annually from the Shah Deniz field’s second phase of development via the expanded South Caucasus Pipeline (SCPX) extending across Azerbaijan and Georgia to the Turkish border.