Mubasher: Gazprom Neft will jointly work with Saudi Aramco in hard-to-recover oil production and on a technology known as hydraulic fracturing, the head of the Russian oil company Alexander Dyukov said on Wednesday, as reported by Reuters.

In October, the world’s biggest oil company in the world and the Russian giant signed an agreement on technological cooperation during the recent visit by King Salman of Saudi Arabia to Moscow.

Chinese state-owned oil companies PetroChina and Sinopec have written to Saudi Aramco in recent weeks to express an interest in a direct deal, however, both companies have declined to comment.

The companies are part of a state-run consortium including China’s sovereign wealth fund.

On Thursday, the Financial Times cited informed sources as saying that Aramco was considering abandoning launching the IPO on a global stock exchange and doing a private offering for the world’s biggest sovereign wealth funds and institutional investors.

Last month, Saudi minister of finance Mohammed Al-Jadaan said that Aramco’s highly anticipated IPO was to be implemented according to plan in 2018.

Aramco has previously posted that the listing is proceeding “on track” after a report the oil company was mapping out contingency plans for a possible adjournment into 2019.

In April 2016, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman stated that Aramco’s IPO would take place in 2017, but may be postponed to 2018.