Natural gas prices are surging in their biggest move in a week as severely cold weather boosts demand and pushes prices to a three-week high.

The Interior Department on Friday proposed the first-ever federal regulations for oil and natural-gas drilling in the Arctic Ocean requiring companies to prepare extensive contingency plans that could swiftly respond to and contain an oil spill in the region’s frigid, isolated waters.

Shale gas and tight oil are commercially produced in just four countries

The United States, in contrast, showed robust economic and employment growth in 2014, which is forecast to continue through 2015.

BHI: US rig count continues 11-week dive, loses 98 more units

The United States will remain the world’s top source of oil supply growth up to 2020, even after the recent collapse in prices, the International Energy Agency said, defying expectations of a more dramatic slowdown in shale growth.

The United States and Russia are once more locked in what could be a generation-defining conflict, and Europe is yet again the core battleground. But this Cold War reprise isn’t about military supremacy.

Monthly average crude oil prices continued to decline during November. The average domestic crude oil first purchase price fell $7.76 (9.8 percent), to $71.07 per barrel.

The US drilling rig count plunged 87 units, a decline that was again spurred mostly by oil rigs, to settle at 1,456 rigs working during the week ended Feb. 6, Baker Hughes Inc. reported.

Never mind dropping oil prices. U.S. producers are pushing harder than ever for the right to sell U.S. crude oil overseas.