Share sales by US oil and gas companies have slowed sharply in recent months, in a sign of the tightening financial pressures on the industry following the fall in crude prices.

According to a recent report from Swift Worldwide Resources, over 150,000 jobs in the global oil and gas industry have been cut since oil prices began to tumble last summer.

States are attempting to get their hands on long-term gas supply contracts with the Russian natural gas exporter Gazprom and pave the way for a multi-commodity energy supplier business where they can influence end-user prices directly.

Iran produces about 2.7m barrels of oil a day. But a report by Wood Mackenzie, the energy consultancy, to be published on Thursday, says that it could add 600,000 b/d of crude production by the end of 2017, assuming that it strikes a nuclear deal with the US and EU that lifts sanctions.

Kuwait's oil minister said on Tuesday he expected oil prices to continue rising, predicting gains in the final quarter of 2015 on the back of global growth.

From June 2014 to May 2015, when the oil and gas prices as measured by the PPI fell by 49%, the PPI by industry classification showed the following changes: - Rates for drilling activities, which primarily represent service fees for contractors to drill oil and gas wells, declined by 19.6%. - Rates for support activities, which include the surveying, cementing, casing, and otherwise treating wells, declined by 1.4%. - The price of sands primarily used for hydraulic fracturing declined 12.5%.

Deepwater oil projects and complex gas facilities worth around $200 billion have been cancelled or put on hold worldwide in recent months due to the sharp drop in oil prices over the past year, consultancy Ernst and Young said.

Large cuts in the energy industry have made news for the first two quarters of 2015. Halliburton cut 9,000 jobs in six months and reported a loss of $643 million in Q1 of 2015. Schlumberger reported even deeper cuts that tallied around 11,000 in efforts to reduce personnel employment 15 percent when compared to the third quarter of 2014.

Norwegian oil and gas company Statoil says it will lay off up to 1,500 staff and 500 consultants by the end of to slash costs.

The expected decrease in shale oil production this summer is causing oil prices to rise. According to the Drilling Productivity report released June 8 by the Energy Information Administration, the government is calling for a 91,000 less barrels per day of shale oil in July. Oil prices seemingly rebounded after the data was released. This news comes on the heels of a decline in oil prices on June 8 due to the Chinese oil crisis concerning oversupply and less demand.