Poland held the largest European dedicated onshore wind auction ever in December with a total volume of 2.2GW, WindEurope announced on 13 January, adding that the average bid of €49/MWh was lower than the wholesale electricity price.

Transport and energy infrastructure development was the focus of a meeting between Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov and Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic. The two spoke in Istanbul before the opening ceremony of the TurkStream pipeline.

Russia and Ukraine reached on Monday a deal to ensure the flow of Russian natural gas through Ukraine to Europe for the next five years. Ukraine is set to get more than $7 billion in gas transit fees by 2024 under the new deal with Gazprom, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said. It is also a positive signal for the EU nusinesses dependent on the reliable delivery of natural gas from Russia. "Europe knows that we will not fail when it comes to energy security," Zelenskiy pointed out.

Greece, Cyprus and Israel will press ahead with the development of a pipeline channeling natural gas from the eastern Mediterranean to Europe, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ office said on Sunday. Mitsotakis, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Nicos Anastasiades, the president of Cyprus, are now expected to sign an agreement on the so-called EastMed pipeline in Athens on 2 January.

Faced with slowing global economic growth and abundant reserves putting pressure on oil prices, the OPEC group and its partners could seek to deepen output cuts when they meet in Vienna on Thursday and Friday.

The biggest listed oil and gas giants must slash production by more than a third by 2040 to keep emissions within targets laid out in the landmark Paris climate deal, an industry watchdog said Friday. Carbon Tracker, a Britain-based think tank, added that current rates of emissions from the energy majors would see the world's carbon budgets surpassed within decades due to an inexorable rise in oil and gas output.

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a key deal Monday with Saudi Arabia during a key visit for an OPEC+ grouping aimed at stabilising global oil prices and seeking to calm regional tensions with Iran. Putin's visit was the first one to the kingdom in over a decade and followed attacks on Saudi oil installations that Saudi Arabia and the United States have blamed on Iran, an ally of Moscow.

Europe's top court overruled last Tuesday an EU decision allowing Russia's Gazprom to ship more gas via the Opal gas pipeline, which links its Nord Stream pipeline to Germany, news wires reported. The ruling is politically charged as Poland and other eastern European nations fight Gazprom's plans to double the capacity of Nord Stream and bypass legacy gas routes via Poland and Ukraine, Reuters commented.

Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday slammed the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline as a "threat" to Europe and welcomed moves by Kiev to tap into US gas supplies, news wires reported. He made the comments beside Poland's President Andrzej Duda in Warsaw, where he was due to attend Sunday ceremonies marking 80 years since the outbreak of World War II.

Exports of liquefied natural gas exports from the US to the EU have risen by 272% for a year, a High-Level Business-to-Business Energy Forum hosted by both side revealed. Since the first cargo in April 2016, LNG exports have been increasing substantially and have seen a steep rise after President Trump and President Juncker's meeting in July 2018. As a result, March 2019 recorded the highest volume ever of EU-US trade in LNG with more than 1.4 billion cubic metres.