About one-fifth of them are home to a gas giant like Jupiter or a still more massive planet.
On the plus side, the ability to directly detect light from a planet closer to the size of Earth than a Jupiter-sized gas giant is a positive step forward in our ability to learn more about planets that might be habitable.
Big projects are now more or less impossible without a state-backed Russian partner, such as Rosneft or Gazprom, a state-run gas giant which has a growing oil interest.
Further complicating matters, Shell was also negotiating to trade half of its 55% stake in Sakhalin II with state-owned gas monopoly Gazprom for half of a giant natural gas field called Zapolyarnoye.
On September 26th the group announced, in a paper posted to arXiv, an online database, that its participants had discovered two probable exoplanets, one a Jupiter-like gas giant, and the other, possibly, a smaller, rocky world about twice the diameter of Earth.
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But rather than just using America as a useful passive gas giant, China is going one step further to make sure that Washington becomes an active LNG player.
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On 7 November, Polish gas monopoly PGNiG filed an arbitration procedure against Russia's gas giant Gazprom to demand a discount on gas imports.
Professor Roxburgh told BBC News there appeared to be another planet orbiting the same "sun" - a Neptune-sized gas giant.
But the chief executive, his workforce and their customers can at least rest a little more comfortably over the issue of energy security now that the British gas and electricity giant is set to build a massive 885-megawatt gas-fired plant in Langage, Devon.
At night the flares of a giant natural-gas plant burn brightly in the city's skies from behind a high fence designed to keep local people out.
Little by little, though, it becomes clear that these silent streets, brooding buildings and a giant, groaning gas works across the way are landmarks of his mind, where the toxic past coexists with the tormented present.
The Chinese buyer, used to steaming, boiling and frying food on a gas burner, may need some persuading to consider a giant cooker complete with roasting and baking ovens.
The oil giant BP says a gas field it runs in partnership with Norwegians and Algerians was attacked.
By now investors expected Davy Jones to be flowing 50 million cubic feet a day of natural gas from its giant reservoir.
At the end of 2012, Russian state-owned gas giant Gazprom sent a 66, 000-tonne cargo of LNG from Statoil's Hammerfest terminal in Norway to the Japanese port of Tobata between November 7 and December 5.
The deal would create a new giant in the natural gas pipeline business, giving billionaire Carl Icahn a quick bang for his buck after the activist investor reported a large stake in Southern Union back in March.
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And new software, plus the ability to vary the projected sizes and brightnesses of planets and moons, makes it possible to simulate the sky from anywhere in the solar system: to see earthrise from Mars, for example, or to watch Jupiter's moons rise and set from a vantage point just above the gas giant's cloud-tops.
Police in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka have used batons to disperse protesters during a six-hour strike against a gas exploration deal with the US energy giant ConocoPhillips.
Earlier this year Dow moved to hedge future gas demand at its giant Freeport, Tex. complex by investing in a liquefied natural gas import terminal.
It was recently picked to help Gazprom, Russia's state-controlled gas giant, develop Shtokman, a massive offshore gasfield.
Wood Group's largest division has secured a major North Sea contract extension with oil and gas giant Total.
Vekselberg built a fortune buying aluminum smelters and later acquired a 12.5% stake in Russian oil and gas giant TNK- BP.
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Last year, Gazprom, the giant state gas company, bought Sibneft, a private Russian oil producer.
The left-wing group wants the government to scrap a deal with the US oil giant ConocoPhillips to explore for gas in the Bay of Bengal.
The second worry is that in dealing with Russian gas you are dealing with Gazprom, a maverick state-controlled giant isolated from competition.
Proposals include a building a gas-to-liquids plant on the Gulf Coast like the giant Pearl GTL plant Shell has finally finished in Qatar.
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Cairn Energy's links in Bangladesh, for example, gave it a head start in the country's nascent gas industry before the giant oil companies rushed in.
The rest comes from spots like Azerbaijan, Angola, Algeria and Iran, where it weathered a bribery scandal in 2004 and is developing the giant South Pars gas field.
Giant planets, they surmised, would guzzle gas in a similar way as they grow.
He also reportedly angered his own father-in-law Viktor Zubkov, who is a former deputy prime minister and currently chairman of the state-owned gas giant Gazprom.
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