NEW YORK, Dec. 4  -- Crude oil prices dropped to less than $44 a barrel Thursday on the New York Mercantile Exchange, hitting its lowest closing price in 35 months.

Tokyo - Nippon Oil Corp, Japan's largest refine

Budapest  - Turkey has accepted a Hungarian proposal to set up an international advocacy body to push for the quick realisation of the planned Nabucco gas pipeline, the head of a Hungarian committee said on Wednesday after talks.

The Turkish parliamentary trade and energy commissioner Soner Aksoy was in Budapest heading his country's delegation for talks with the leaders of the Hungarian parliament's ad hoc Nabucco committee.

After the meeting, the committee chairman Janos Koka told the state news agency MTI that Aksoy had expressed support for Hungary's recent proposal to set up an Nabucco advocacy committee.

CARACAS, Venezuela, Nov. 27 -- The presidents of Russia and Venezuela have signed bilateral agreements, including construction of a nuclear power plant in the South American country.

The BBC reported the two leaders signed the nuclear power agreement Wednesday night.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin said President Dmitry Medvedev, the first Russian head of state to visit Caracas in 150 years, and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez signed a 25-year plan to cooperate with oil, gas and power generation, RIA Novosti reported Thursday.

The chief election commission of India has served a notice to union petroleum minister Murli Deora for his alleged announcement on fuel price reduction.

Mr. Deora had announced price reduction in line with falling international prices of crude oil, after completion of the ongoing election process and opposition parties, especially, BJP, objected to the comments of the Union Minister. It filed a complaint against him before the election commission. Now, the EC has asked the union minister to file his reply by November 27 on his comments regarding price cut.

Russian Energy Minister Sergey Shmatk, speaking at the inaugural function of the two-day 'India-CIS roundtable on hydrocarbons' said regarding the Imperial bid, "Our approach towards this important deal is very liberal. If the Indian company acquires Imperial Energy, we are not going to put forward any demand regarding reciprocal stake in Indian oil PSUs."

OVL was expecting that it might have to give 25-40 per cent stake to a Russian company in lieu of the regulatory approvals from the Russian Government for acquiring Imperial Energy which will cost about 1.4 billion pounds ($2.1 billion).