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.

New gas pipeline will soon link Poland with Denmark and Norway after last Monday the European Commission signed a multimillion-euro grant that will allow the project to go ahead. The Baltic Pipe is seen as Warsaw's answer to the Russian-German Nord Stream 2. The project will get a €215m EU grant, which was agreed by the Member States in January. The value of the entire investment in the pipeline, to be completed in 2022, is €1.6bn, around half of which is to be supplied by the Polish side.

Ukraine and Russia should be able to reach an agreement by the end of 2019 on the transportation of natural gas to the European Union, European Commission Vice President Maros Sefcovic said in Brussels on 21 January after chairing a meeting with Russian and Ukrainian officials.The talks were attended by Russian Energy Minister Aleksandr Novak, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin, and executives from Ukrainian state energy company Naftogaz and Russian gas giant Gazprom.

Macedonian plans to move decisively forward with decarbonisation have received a boost in the form of a 5.9 million-euro loan from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) to ELEM, the state-owned electricity company. The loan is intended to fund the country’s first large-scale solar power plant built on the site of an exhausted lignite coal mine in the town of Kicevo, 112 kilometres from the capital Skopje and is part of FYROM's goal to generate 23 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020.

Oil markets dropped by around 1 percent in 2019’s first trading on Wednesday, pulled down by surging US output and concerns about an economic slowdown in 2019 as factory activity in China, the world’s biggest oil importer, contracted. International Brent crude futures LCOc1 were at $53.19 per barrel at 0544 GMT, down 61 cents, or 1.1 percent, from their final close of 2018.

The global oil cartel, OPEC, and its allies are working toward a deal to further reduce oil output and raise prices, which has seriously fallen in the last week. According to sources close to the talks, the oil-producing nations eye cutting output by at least 1.3 million barrels per day, but need to convince Russia to join the measure.

Qatar announced Monday that it will the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) on 1 January, 2019 after nearly 60 years of membership. The announcement was initially made in a series of tweets by country's state oil company, Qatar Petroleum, just days before a crucial meeting between the influential oil cartel and its allies. It also comes shortly after Qatar reviewed ways in which it could improve its global standing and plan its long-term strategy

The European Commission has approved under EU State aid rules a measure to support electricity production from renewable sources for self-consumption in France until 2020. The measure is aimed at helping France boost the share of electricity produced from renewable energy sources to meet its climate targets, in line with the environmental objectives of the EU, without unduly distorting competition in the Single Market.