With a sustained price drop to $60 a barrel, North American shale drilling would be especially challenged in emerging fields such as some in Ohio and Louisiana, where costs are at the highest early in development, according to Citigroup and ITG.

Saudi Arabia and its OPEC allies’ firm stand against cutting crude output to slow the plunge in oil prices has set the energy world on a painful course that will leave the weakest behind, from governments to U.S. wildcatters.

Shares in the world’s biggest energy groups have tumbled in a market rout as plunging oil prices put at risk billions of dollars of investment and jeopardised future supplies of crude.

Even as Western sanctions over Ukraine bite, crashing oil prices are hitting Russia's economy and government finances.

Brent and West Texas Intermediate crudes fell to the lowest level in more than four years after OPEC failed to cut its output in response to a glut.

The International Energy Agency’s chief economist on Friday urged oil producers to boost investment in new projects to meet an anticipated rise in demand, a move that he said may avoid oil price spikes in coming years.

According to a review of financial statements released in recent weeks and despite lower crude oil prices, companies drilling in North American tight oil formations recorded improved financial results in third-quarter 2014 as compared with third-quarter 2013

U.S. retail regular-grade gasoline prices continue to decline, averaging $2.82 per gallon (gal) as of November 24.

Real gross domestic product -- the value of the production of goods and services in the United States, adjusted for price changes -- increased at an annual rate of 3.9 percent in the third quarter of 2014, according to the "second" estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Over the past five years, rapid growth in U.S. onshore natural gas and oil production has led to increased volumes of natural gas plant liquids (NGPL) and liquefied refinery gases (LRG). The increasing economic importance of these volumes, as a result of their significant growth in production, has revealed the need for better data accuracy and transparency to improve the quality of historical data and projections for supply, demand, and prices of these liquids, co-products, and competing products. To reduce confusion in terminology and improve its presentation of data, EIA has worked with industry and federal and state governments to clarify gas liquid terminology and has developed the term Hydrocarbon Gas Liquids, or HGL.