President Obama’s energy and environment adviser, Joseph Aldy has urged natural gas companies to disclose the chemicals it uses for hydraulic fracturing to access US shale gas reserves - or risk inhibiting future shale gas development.

ConocoPhillips chief executive Jim Mulva told a US energy conference this week that the US government was ignoring the potential of the country’s vast shale gas reserves.

Eni’s chief executive officer Paolo Scaroni was reported as saying that the competing Nabucco and South Stream pipelines could benefit from merging at least part of their route.

The latest news on Algeria’s state-owned Sonatrach corruption scandal has seen the government rule that foreign companies must sign a commitment not to bribe officials in order to qualify for future state oil and gas contracts.

Shell has signed two contracts with a consortium of Technip and Samsung Heavy Industries for the Prelude floating LNG project off the coast of Western Australia, Technip announced on Tuesday.

The Tangguh LNG project in Indonesia will supply a total of 2 million tonnes of LNG to Japanese utility Chubu Electric by 2015, according to Indonesian energy regulator BPMigas.

US pipeline companies are planning large and small pipeline infrastructure projects to accommodate the increase in gas production from shale plays in Appalachia, Mid and Southwest regions. A drilling boom using improved horizontal drilling techniques to tap into the large volumes of unconventional gas, particularly for shale, have led to US gas reserves rising over 50% in the past five years.

Algeria’s energy minister Chakib Khelil has reiterated his country had no plan to include spot-indexed prices in its gas supply contracts, unlike the recent changes Statoil and Gazprom announced in the past weeks.