If this price drop does happen, then Norway will be caught in the crossfire, as its production is more expensive than Gazprom's. Further, Gazprom has already developed the giant Bovanenkovo field in the Yamal Peninsula, where output has been curtailed as export markets and Gazprom's own domestic demand have have not required the additional gas. This means it is in a position to bring more cheap gas to market at little additional cost beyond transport. For Norway, however, adding more production capacity entails more capital expenditure.

Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest crude exporter, has raised June oil prices to Asia by the most in 14 months, in a hopeful sign that demand from the region is on the up.

On Friday, however, Export-Import Bank of China and China Development Bank signed two 15-year loans, for €9.34bn ($10.7bn) and Rmb9.76bn ($1.5bn) on Friday, according to regulatory statements from Yamal LNG.

Rosneft Trading SA, a company of Rosneft Group, delivered its first LNG shipment as part of its contract with Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Company. The delivery of the cargo was made by the GOLAR ICE tanker to the Ain Sukhna port within the Master LNG Supply and Purchase Agreement signed in August 2015.

U.S. Rig Count is down 5 rigs from last week to 415, with oil rigs down 4 to 328, gas rigs down 1 to 86, and miscellaneous rigs unchanged at 1. Canadian Rig Count is down 1 rig from last week to 36, with oil rigs up 1 to 11, gas rigs down 2 to 24, and miscellaneous rigs unchanged at 1.

The June crude oil contract on the New York Mercantile Exchange climbed 34¢ to settle at $44.66/bbl, and the July contract gained 41¢ to $45.32/bbl. The NYMEX natural gas contract for June gained 2.5¢ to $2.10/MMbtu. The Henry Hub price was $1.84/MMbtu, down 20¢.

BP PLC, on behalf of the Shah Deniz consortium, has let a $1.5-billion contract for the transport and installation of the deeper water subsea production systems for Shah Deniz Stage 2 offshore Azerbaijan to the BOS Shelf LLC, Saipem Contracting Netherlands BV, and Star Gulf FZCO consortium.

Iran plans to double its Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) production in the post-sanctions era, Deputy Director of International Affairs for Marketing and Crude Oil Operation in the National Iranian Oil Company Safar-Ali Karamati said.

Libya's production was down to 212,000 barrels on Monday, after the largest National Oil Corp (NOC) subsidiary, AGOCO, was forced to slash output by one-third from southeastern fields, an NOC spokesman in Tripoli said.

After jumping more than 2% as the markets opened with Asian trading Sunday night, both major contracts fell as reports emerged that the threat from the fires was diminishing, at least for the moment.

Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter, plans “significant growth” in output in 2016 and further international expansion, the head of the country’s state-run producer said, even as global oversupply contributed to a drop in crude prices from a year ago.

The pullout comes as crude oil prices have plummeted to less than half their June 2014 levels, forcing oil companies to slash spending. For Shell and ConocoPhillips, the decision to abandon Arctic acreage was formalized just before a May 1 due date to pay the U.S. government millions of dollars in rent to keep holdings in the Chukchi Sea north of Alaska.

Policymakers always worry about Russia having too much market share of European gas, but from my point of view Russia needs Europe a lot more than Europe needs Russia. The reason for that is that gas has been losing market share in Russia and in Ukraine. Russia’s projects to straddle across to Asia are not progressing so well and also its LNG projects are not progressing quickly. So really the only game in town is Europe, particularly from a price perspective. However, that means that their dependency on Europe is growing so policymakers do not need to worry about Russia.

Internal differences are killing OPEC and its ability to influence the markets has all but evaporated, top Russian oil executive Igor Sechin told Reuters in some of his harshest remarks ever about the oil cartel.

Brent crude oil prices are forecast to average $41/b in 2016 and $51/b in 2017.

Rising incomes in China, India, and other emerging Asia economies are a key driver of the global energy outlook. Developing Asia accounts for more than half of the projected increase in global energy use through 2040. This increase will have a profound effect on the development of world energy markets. Clean energy technologies play an important role in the outlook, with renewables expected to be the fastest-growing energy source.

Azerbaijan can boost annual gas exports to 50bn m3 by 2050, deputy energy minister Natig Abbasov said recently.

Japan is aiming to become an international LNG trading hub by the early 2020s, opening access to receiving terminals and beefing up large-scale storage facilities.

The United States is deeply concerned about the Nord Stream-2 gas pipeline project as a threat to national security, a senior U.S. energy envoy said on Friday, after the issue was raised at talks in Washington this week.

Reform of sprawling state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to improve efficiency is a priority for China's leaders as growth slows in the world's second biggest economy, and was a key plank of the country's latest five-year plan agreed in 2015.