U.S. oil drillers pulled rigs this week as crude traded below $60 a barrel for the seventh straight day.

Crude prices surged from the lowest closing levels since May 2009 as comments from Saudi Arabia’s oil minister yesterday added to the most volatile market in three years.

The main outcome of Putin’s visit to Turkey was the announcement that the $40 billion South Stream gas pipeline project would be cancelled. The effects of this cancellation on Russia and Turkey differ, even though the project was interpreted as a rapprochement of their strategic visions.

Over and over again, they keep insisting on their Third Energy Package, which the Russian leaders refer to as ‘a very harmful document’, and want Gazprom to unbundle its gas supplying, transporting and marketing businesses; share pipeline space with other gas producers; obey independent regulators and transmission operators; and drop manipulations with prices.

Shale gas was supposed to be Ukraine’s ticket to greater energy independence from Russia. Chevron Corp. (CVX)’s decision to pull the plug has smashed those hopes.

Israel made another discovery off its coast. The newly discovered field, Royee, may hold up to 3.2 Tcf of natural gas according to a statement made by the Israeli partners in the field Ratio and Israel Opportunity who hold respectively 70%, and 10% stakes.

America’s oil and gas boom was enabled by a huge pile of cheap financing.

The Russian Foreign Ministry denounced new Western sanctions against Ukraine's Crimea region on Saturday as a "collective punishment" on local residents who voted in a referendum last March to join Russia.

Совет директоров ОАО «НК «Роснефть» на заседании 18 декабря рассмотрел предварительные итоги деятельности в 2014 году и утвердил план финансово-хозяйственной деятельности на 2015-2016 годы.

The IEA Oil Market Report for December cut the outlook for 2015 global oil demand growth by 230 000 barrels per day (230 kb/d) to 0.9 million barrels per day (mb/d) on lower expectations for the Former Soviet Union and other oil‐exporting countries.