Armenia is not ruling out extending the Iran-Armenia natural gas pipeline to Europe to supply gas to European Union countries, the Armenian energy minister said on Monday.

According to Transeuro Energy's recent drilling update on Armenia, which explores natural gas in Armenia, "a potential hydrocarbon gas zone was encountered between 950m and 1,150m with elevated values of methane, ethane, propane and butane identified on the mud log."

Ukraine's acting fuel and energy minister said on Wednesday that talks with Russia on natural gas deliveries would resume shortly following a price hike for Turkmen gas.

Galp Energia, a Portuguese oil and gas company, said that it planned to bay natural gas from Venezuela and to help building a liquefaction plant there.

A new report by the Energy Forum at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy finds that the United States will continue to rely on imported natural gas even if areas that are currently restricted are opened up to drilling.

Finland supports the Nord Stream pipeline being built under the Baltic Sea to pump Russian natural gas to Germany but will study its environmental consequences, the Finnish ambassador to Moscow said.

Ukraine has paid for Russian natural gas supplies in 2007 in full, RosUkrEnergo, the sole gas supplier to the former Soviet republic, said in a statement on Wednesday.

Nanotechnology could revolutionize the natural gas industry across the whole lifecycle from extraction to pollution reduction or be an enormous missed opportunity, claim two industry experts writing in Inderscience's International Journal of Nanotechnology.

The Nabucco project to build a trans-Caspian natural gas pipeline to Europe bypassing Russia is impracticable, the general secretary of the EU Energy Charter Secretariat said on Monday.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has described plans to extend the Iran-Armenia gas pipeline to Europe as very promising.

The 2008 price of Russian natural gas for Belarus could be around $125 per 1,000 cubic meters, 25% more than the current rate, a deputy Russian industry and energy minister said on Friday.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko proposed that Russia start to build a second leg of a pipeline delivering natural gas to Europe, and offered free transit for five years.