Oil & Energy

Uzbek National Company Uztransgas ceased gas supplies to Kyrgyzstan's southern regions.

The Gulf state of Kuwait has discovered a new oil and gas field in Kabed area close to the well-known Manageesh oilfield.

French President Francois Hollande will not allow shale gas exploration during his presidency. France currently has a ban on shale gas exploration using hydraulic fracturing, the only current commercially viable technique.

Israel's Supreme Court has given the government 15 days to respond to an appeal by four Knesset members and four environmental and political organizations against the government's authority to decide on the export of offshore gas reserves.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that Israel will keep 60 percent of the natural gas it harvests from its offshore gas fields for domestic use, setting export levels at 40%. The Tamar and Leviathan fields, discovered in 2009 and 2010 west of the Haifa coast, are two of the world's largest offshore natural gas fields. Both are located in Israel's exclusive economic waters and once they become fully operational, Israel will become one of the world's 25 leading gas exporters.

A natural gas deposit has been discovered in Chile's southernmost Magallanes region.

Kurdish region will begin supplying natural gas to Turkey by 2016, and that the price of Kurdish gas will be almost 50% of the price of the Russian gas that is supplied to Turkey.

Gazprom and China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) met in Moscow to addressed issues related to the conclusion of a long-term contract for Russian gas supplies to China. Russia's Gazprom Gas Price to China won't be linked to US spot market prices.

Myanmar/Burma has recently undertaken political and economic reforms, which portend uncertain times for Chinese projects in the country.

A pipeline connecting western Burma to China is ready to carry gas from July, but it won’t be fully operational for about three more months due to construction delays in China.

Russia and China signed an unprecedented oil agreement. The value of 25 years of cooperation between Russia’s state oil major Rosneft and China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) will be $270 billion, said President Putin at the economic forum in St. Petersburg.Under the contract Rosneft will export 360.3 million tonnes of crude to China.

Following the raids on the London office of the lead oil price publisher Platts over suspicions of manipulating oil prices in the market, the European Union has decided to introduce tough new rules that would effectively prevent price reporting agencies from operating.