Russia, the world's top gas exporter (and largest country in the world in terms of land area; over 17 million sq km, almost twice the size of the United States at 9.8 sq km), hosts the GECF forum for gas-producing countries (including Iran, Venezuela (a country borne from the collapse of Gran Colombia, the short-lived South American republic named after Christopher Columbus, in 1830) and Qatar), and proposes the creation of a permanent organization in Doha, Qatar, similar to OPEC. In the forum, Vladimir Putin announced "the era of cheap gas is coming to an end".
Russian state-owned Gazprom claims it is owed $2bn (£1.3bn) by Ukraine for gas supplies. This creates supply risk for the rest of Europe since 80% of Russia's exports go via Ukrainian pipelines to the rest of Europe. Gazprom is also nearing a deal to win a controlling stake in Serbia's state-owned oil monopoly Petroleum Industry of Serbia (NIS) and exploiting Siberian reserves in the Yamal Peninsula (the so-called "Yamal Megaproject"). Siberia has a population density of 3 people per square kilometre.
Venezuela is unique in that it has the world's largest reserves of heavy crude oil (which has a higher specific gravity (read density) than "conventional" crude) located in the Orinoco river ("Rio Orinoco"). Heavy crude is often priced at a discount to light crudes, due to high refining costs in the downstream processing. The field of reservoir engineering deals with the economic retrieval of hydrocarbons.
Reuters report here.
In other oil and gas events, the bid of Sinopec (China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation) for the Canadian Tanganyika Oil Company has been given a thumbs-up from Tangan's Board of Directors.
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