MOSCOW (Zee News) – President Vladimir Putin said Saturday that he was looking forward to the visit of the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Russia next month and spoke in favour of intensifying energy dialogue with India, one of the world's biggest consumers of hydrocarbons.

Putin conveyed this during his interaction with Petroleum Minister Murli Deora, the Prime Minister's special envoy to the second summit of Conference on Interaction and Confidence building in Asia (CICA) in Almaty, Kazakhstan.

During the formal one-to-one with Deora, Putin said that he was "eagerly" looking forward to Singh's visit to St Petersburg in July for the G-8 summit under Russian rotating presidency as also to their bilateral talks.

Separately on the sidelines of the CICA Summit, Putin also expressed satisfaction at the ONGC Videsh's participation in Sakhalin-1 offshore oil and gas block.

Petroleum Secretary M S Srinivasan is expected to visit Moscow shortly for talks with Russian industry and energy minister Viktor Khristenko as a follow-up of today's parleys between Putin and Deora, diplomatic sources in Almaty told news agencies over phone.

Besides India and Russia, CISA groups 18 countries including China, Pakistan, Iran, Israel, Palestine and Egypt. Deora also had parleys with Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi to thrash out remaining issues of Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) gas pipeline during the summit.