PLATTS - Ukraine is looking at different ways to use its vast gas transit network should Kiev fail to agree a new transit deal with Russia's Gazprom once their existing contract expires at the end of 2019, a senior Ukrainian politician said.

BLOOMBERG - Gazprom PJSC, the Russian company that’s the dominant exporter of natural gas into Europe, is exploring ways to produce emissions-free hydrogen from its fuel and create a 153 billion-euro ($175 billion) a year market by 2050

ROSNEFT - 3Q 2018 EBITDA growth by 13.8% QoQ up to RUB 643 bln, 9M 2018 EBITDA growth by 1.6 times YoY up to RUB 1,593 bln with margins improvement 9M 2018 Net Income jumped by 3.4 times YoY up to RUB 451 bln Free Cash Flow improvement in 3Q 2018 by more than 2 times QoQ up to RUB 509 bln and over 4 times YoY up to RUB 872 bln

ROSNEFT - Q3 2018 AVERAGE DAILY HYDROCARBON PRODUCTION REACHED 5.83 MMBOE, DEMONSTRATING A 2.1% GROWTH VS. Q2 2018 LEVEL

GAZPROM - In the course of the meeting, the parties signed an Amendment to the contract on gas supplies to Austria. According to the document, gas deliveries to Austria will be increased by 1 billion cubic meters per year beyond the contractual amount for the entire contract period.

PLATTS - Gazprom Export sold the highest volume of gas on its Electronic Sales Platform (ESP) on Friday for almost a month, with 62 million cu m of gas sold for December delivery to four points in central and eastern Europe.

BLOOMBERG - Russia’s crude and condensate output averaged 11.412 million barrels a day last month, according to data from the Energy Ministry’s CDU-TEK unit released Friday. That’s about 160,000 barrels a day more than two years ago, before Russia agreed to cut supply with OPEC. It’s a post-Soviet record, and not far off the highest-ever output.

FT - Russia has vowed to help Iran counter US attempts to throttle its oil sales when sanctions come into effect next week, saying it will continue trading Tehran’s crude in defiance of Washington.

EBRD - Economic growth in Russia is expected to hold steady at 1.5 per cent this year and into 2019 as the positive impact of higher oil prices is offset by the negative economic consequences of sanctions imposed by the United States of America and the European Union (EU), said the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).

REUTERS - Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said on Saturday there was no reason for Russia to freeze or cut its oil production levels, noting that there were risks that global oil markets could be facing a deficit.

PLATTS - In September 27, 2018, BASF signed a transaction agreement with LetterOne to merge their respective oil and gas businesses, Wintershall and DEA, into a joint venture.

FT - That the Nord Stream 2 pipeline will increase Europe’s dependence on Russian natural gas is a geographic and arithmetical fact. But buried in the heated rhetoric — now rising to US sanction threats — over how much that matters, is just how inexpensive it would be for Europe to purchase supply diversity with liquefied natural gas from the US.

NOVATEK - In the third quarter and the nine months of 2018, profit attributable to shareholders of PAO NOVATEK increased to RR 45.9 billion (RR 15.23 per share), or by 21.6%, and to RR 121.1 billion (RR 40.17 per share), or by 8.1%, respectively, as compared to the corresponding periods in 2017.

TASS - Saudi Arabia is a very responsible country, for decades we used our oil policy as responsible economic tool and isolated it from politics. So lets hope that the world would deal with the political crisis, including the one with Saudi citizen in Turkey, with wisdom. And we will exercise our wisdom both in political and economic fronts.

REUTERS - Russia’s Rosneft (ROSN.MM) and U.S. ExxonMobil (XOM.N) plan to build a liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant in a consortium with Indian and Japanese partners, spreading the estimated $15 billion cost, two sources familiar with the talks said.