Gazprom PJSC, the world’s biggest natural gas producer, said first-quarter profit rose 71 percent as a weaker ruble countered lower prices for the fuel and falling sales volumes.
Net income climbed to 382 billion rubles ($5.9 billion) from 223 billion rubles a year earlier, the Moscow-based company said Monday in a statement. That exceeded analysts’ average 353 billion-ruble estimate, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Revenue rose 5.7 percent to 1.65 trillion rubles.
The US has added a Russian oil and gas field to its list of energy sector sanctions as a results of Moscow’s actions in Ukraine.
The move affects the Yuzhno-Kirinskoye field which is located in the Sea of Okhotsk of the Siberian coast and owned by Russia’s leading gas provider Gazprom.
Gazprom is in talks with Engie on participation in an expanded Nord Stream pipeline to carry gas from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.
Russian gas company Gazprom said on Friday it had lodged a case against Turkmenistan's Turkmengaz at the international arbitration court in Stockholm over the price in a supply contract.
The move came two weeks after Turkmenistan accused Gazprom of not paying for gas supplied from the Central Asian country this year.
Gazprom, the world's top natural gas producer, buys gas from Turkmenistan for its own use or resale. But the amount has fallen this year as relations between Moscow and the reclusive former Soviet Union republic are increasingly strained by a competition to supply the large Chinese gas market.
Royal Dutch Shell has acquired Morgan Stanley's European gas and power trading book as the U.S. bank continues its exit from the sector.
Shell is set to significantly increase its footprint in the gas market in the coming years if it completes its proposed $70 billion acquisition of smaller British rival BG Group and as part of a growing strategic alliance with Russia's Gazprom, the world's top gas producer.
Shell Energy Europe, its supply and trading arm in the region, has signed a binding sales and purchase agreement for Morgan Stanley's portfolio, the Anglo-Dutch company said on Friday, without providing further details.
Russia's Gazprom has cancelled a contract with Italian oil services group Saipem to build the first line of a gas pipeline beneath the Black Sea, the Russian state gas company said in a statement on Wednesday.
Gazprom said it will start talks with other potential contractors to build the first line of the Turkish Stream pipeline, which would run beneath the Black Sea to Turkey. The project would consist of four lines, each capable of carrying 15.75 billion cubic metres of gas per year.
Saipem said last month it was asked by Gazprom to start work on a pipeline under the Black Sea, which should avoid Ukraine as a transit country for roughly half of Russian gas shipped to Europe.
A small Chinese energy firm has signed a deal with a state-controlled Russian oil company to invest in an East Siberian oilfield project.
CEFC China Energy signed the deal with Gazprom Neft, the oil arm of Russia's top natural gas producer, on July 6, according to a statement on the Shanghai-based company's website.
The private chemicals and fuel company said it is investing in three blocks holding 1.9 billion barrels of oil in the Baikal project, 90 kilometres away from the East Siberia-Pacific Ocean (ESPO) pipeline that supplies China with Russian oil.
Ukraine said it halted natural gas imports from Russia on Wednesday after EU-brokered talks collapsed without a deal on how much Kiev should pay for its supplies and an interim accord expired at midnight.
Russian gas flows to the European Union via Ukraine were unaffected. The European Commission said both sides had promised gas transit west would remain smooth, but it would not relinquish its mediation efforts until there was agreement.
"From today, Ukraine is not getting gas from Russia. Transit supplies are as normal," Maksim Belyavsky, a spokesman for Ukraine's gas transit monopoly Ukrtransgaz, said.
BP Plc’s $750 million purchase of a Siberian oilfield stake is as much a bet on China as it is on Russia.
Taas-Yuriakh Neftegazodobycha LLC’s blocks near China’s northern border will supply the planned Tianjin refinery on the east coast, according to OAO Rosneft, which sold the 20 percent holding last week. BP Chief Executive Officer Bob Dudley predicts the unit’s natural gas reserves will prove strategic as Russia develops its Far East and builds ties with the world’s biggest energy consumer.
“You have to make a judgment on whether it will have value,” Dudley told Bloomberg News on June 19 in St. Petersburg, referring to the gas reserves. “We believe it will, eventually.”
Russia today signed a preliminary agreement on building a natural-gas pipeline through Greece.
The deal signals strengthening ties between the countries as the crisis-stricken government in Athens is increasingly isolated from the rest of Europe.
Russian gas company Gazprom may offer up to 49 percent in its Baltic LNG project to a strategic partner and the most likely candidates are Royal Dutch Shell or a consortium of Japanese firms, Russia's Kommersant newspaper said on Wednesday.
The agreement may be signed this week during an economic forum in Russia's second city of St Petersburg, it reported, quoting sources in the gas industry.
A meeting between the head of Russia's Gazprom's and Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz is expected to be rescheduled for next week as both sides strive to finalise agreement on a proposed underwater gas pipeline to Turkey, a senior energy ministry official said on Wednesday.
Turkey was named as Russia's preferred partner for an alternative to its planned South Stream pipeline to carry gas to southern Europe without crossing Ukraine after Russia aborted the project in December, citing EU objections.
Gazprom has been given more time to respond to charges by European Union antitrust regulators after it was alleged the company levies excessive prices and blocks rivals in Eastern Europe.
The European Commission announced in April that the Russian oil giant had been given 12 weeks to reply to the charges.
Antitrust regulators had brought the charges after more than two years of investigation.
OAO Gazprom, Russia’s natural-gas exporter, said profit fell 86 percent as financing costs rose.
Net income shrank to 159 billion rubles ($3 billion) in 2014 from 1.14 trillion rubles the previous year, the Moscow-based company said Wednesday in a statement. Analysts expected profit of 665 billion rubles, according to the average of five estimates compiled.
Antitrust regulators in the European Union have charged Gazprom with abusing its position in Eastern European countries.
Earlier this week it was revealed charges could be brought against the Russian energy giant.
Now, after more than two years of investigation, the European Commission said the company had hindered competition across countries including Poland and Hunga
OAO Gazprom will get an antitrust complaint from the European Union as soon as Wednesday in a two-year-old probe into gas pricing that’s been delayed amid political tension in Ukraine, according to an EU official.
The EU, which relies heavily on Russian gas, will send a statement of objections to Gazprom that lays out where regulators see possible violations of competition law, according to the official, who asked not to be identified because the decision isn’t public.
The EU was examining whether the company’s contracts unfairly link oil and gas prices and prevent customers from reselling gas.
The complaint would be the second in as many weeks for EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, who escalated a probe into search-engine giant Google Inc. The 47-year-old Vestager said last week that she planned to act “decisively against energy companies that harm rivals” and “block energy flows from one EU country to another.”
Russia’s $400 billion gas-supply deal with China in 2014 took almost a decade to pull off. While state-run exporter OAO Gazprom pushes to cement ties, lackluster energy markets suggest a second agreement may be slow to follow.
Crude oil, the main component of Russia’s gas-pricing formula, has tumbled almost 40 percent in six months, weakening Gazprom’s bargaining power. The slump has reduced the funds available for a second Russian pipeline to China.
“The lower oil price has caused too much trouble” for financing two pipeline projects, said Keun-Wook Paik, a senior research fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. Russia may seek to prioritize the second pipe, cheaper and quicker to build yet less useful for China, which knows “leverage is on their side,” he said.
The Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said Ukraine has requested one billion cubic metres of gas imports from Russia this month.
It would treble the amount received in March and comes after Naftogaz and Russia’s Gazprom signed an interim deal for cheaper supplies of gas from Russia.
The deal, which is expected to last three month, could help provide some time as both country’s debate energy costs.
Russia could cut off supplies to neighbouring Ukraine by the end of the week if it does not get further payments from the country, a spokesman for the gas company Gazprom has said.
Sergei Kupriyanov said in televised remarks that “if no new funds are received from Kiev, then naturally we cannot continue delivering gas to Ukraine”. He did not specify the sum.
Following a bruising dispute over prices and debt that raised fears of supply disruptions in Europe, Russia and Ukraine signed a deal in October requiring Kiev to pay in advance for gas shipments.
Mr Kupriyanov said that discussions with Ukraine’s gas company, Naftogaz, were ongoing, but gave no other details about the talks.
Russian energy company Gazprom said it was cutting expenses by more than $200million in an effort to streamline operations going forward.
The board of directors said it was cutting expenses by $238.7 million and expecting around $1.65 billion in foreign loans.
The Russian Central Bank last week raised its key interest rate by 6.5% to 17% in an effort to arrest the decline of the nation's currency.
