March 2016

Persistently low oil prices complicate the conduct of monetary policy, risking further inroads by unanchored inflation expectations. What is more, the current episode of historically low oil prices could ignite a variety of dislocations including corporate and sovereign defaults, dislocations that can feed back into already jittery financial markets. The possibility of such negative feedback loops makes demand support by the global community—along with a range of country-specific structural and financial-sector reforms—all the more urgent.

Europe and Russia are each trying to diversify—the first by getting more gas suppliers, and the second by trying to sell more gas to China and East Asia.

It is a challenging business environment but it's a sign of strong resilience that businesses can look ahead and still see opportunities that exist around the globe.

Neil Atkinson, head of the IEA’s Oil Industry and Markets Division, said in Singapore on Wednesday. About $300 billion is needed to sustain the current level of production, and nations including the U.S., Canada, Brazil, and Mexico are facing difficulty in keeping up investments, he said.

“Low oil prices fuel a reduction in risk-taking, and when there is less risk-taking, asset prices will fall. It can lead to a downward asset price spiral,”

“We furnish 20 percent of China’s crude oil imports – about one million barrels a day. But there’s a significant gap in what we are doing now, and what we can offer,” Nasser said. “Our investments in China’s entire oil value chain – integrating supply, refining, chemicals, lubes, distribution and marketing – don’t match our supply.”

The parties addressed strategic bilateral cooperation. It was noted that the collaboration between Gazprom and Chinese energy companies and financial institutions was consistently developing.

India is replacing China as the center of the world’s oil demand growth as its economy expands faster than any other major country and Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made energy security a priority for the nation, which imports 80 percent of its oil requirements.

Gasoline production is set to grow in 2016 due to the commissioning of Indian Oil Corp.'s 2.9 million mt/year continuous catalytic reformer at its greenfield 15 million mt/year (300,000 b/d) Paradip refinery, and completion of Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd.'s gasoline capacity expansion at its Kochi refinery by 6 million mt/year to 15.5 million mt/year (310,000 b/d) sometime in May.

Europe’s leaders have long been hoping that U.S. shale gas would help the bloc reduce its reliance on gas from Russia, which provides around a third of the region’s supplies. The ethane from Ineos’s shipment won’t be a substitute for Russian gas, which is mostly methane, but it will help to lower prices in the European market, said Karen Sund, partner at Norway-based Sund Energy consultancy.