As most of Russia’s energy exports go to the European Union, both players are strongly interdependent. For Russia, energy resources, especially gas, are viewed as a tool to project power beyond its borders.

UK oil and gas companies expect to create thousands of jobs over the next two years despite the dramatic slide in oil prices.

Not long ago, oil looked like a black gold mine for General Electric. The company known for toaster ovens and lightbulbs wrapped up a three-year, $10 billion buying spree in 2013 to bolster the growing oil and gas equipment unit that helped GE recover from the financial crisis. The company bulked up with the expectation that crude prices would remain at about $100 a barrel for years.

Capital spending budgets are being cut back, drilling rigs idled and staff laid off. The remarkable growth of US oil production, which brought more than 1m barrels per day of additional supply on to world markets in each of the past three years, seems likely to flatten out this year.

Ukraine is facing existential challenges, and energy security is one of them. The country is dependent on Russia supplying most of its natural gas as well as uranium fuel for its nuclear reactors. Under these very difficult circumstances, a government with a holistic view of its strategic security and energy goals would logically develop a policy aimed at encouraging increased domestic oil and gas production. Unfortunately, Kyiv is doing the opposite.

Moscow and Beijing will sign an agreement on the pipeline shipping gas from Western Siberia to China by the end of the year, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Monday, adding that his government will intensify trade ties with Russia in the coming months.

In December Saudi Arabia’s oil minister Ali al-Naimi posed an interesting question: “Is there a black swan out there that we don’t know about which will come by 2050 and we will have no demand?”

The International Monetary Fund on Wednesday approved a bigger, high-risk bailout for Ukraine, giving Kiev immediate access to $5 billion of $17.5 billion in emergency IMF credit in another bid to keep the embattled country afloat.

The Bulgarian Government reportedly launched a €33,000 tender for the offshore section of the South Stream project, in order to better understand some financial implications of the project.

Towns in the northern province of Groningen sit atop the continent’s biggest gas field, where the Dutch government says exploration by Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Exxon Mobil Corp. has triggered 196 earthquakes since 2013, damaging buildings and making home sales difficult. Lawmakers, seeking support in provincial elections March 18, have responded to residents’ complaints with a proposed cut in gas production, the second since December, in the hope that less output means fewer tremors.