“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.

More than $400 billion of proposed energy projects have been delayed since mid-2014 and pushed into 2017 and beyond as oil prices slid about 60 percent in the past two years, according to consulting firm Wood Mackenzie Ltd. The LNG market in particular is facing an oversupply as U.S. exports add to a wave of shipments from Australia.

Federal lawyers on Tuesday formally asked a judge in New Orleans to approve a record-breaking $20 billion-plus settlement agreement announced last July by the Department of Justice and five Gulf Coast states to resolve years of legal fighting about the 2010 Gulf oil spill.

PetroChina Co Ltd on Wednesday said profit fell 70 percent last year as low prices brought down upstream earnings, eclipsing the impact of a jump in natural gas income brought about in part by pipeline consolidation.

In 2015, the total overdue debt increased by 19.8 per cent, from RUB 127 billion to RUB 152.1 billion; the gas payment rate decreased by 1.4 per cent to 96.2 per cent. The debt is held mainly by the population, heating companies, and electric power enterprises. Over 80 per cent of the debt is borne by the consumers of the North Caucasian Federal District (RUB 48.6 billion or 81.4 per cent of the total consumer debt in Russia as of January 1, 2016).