Rosneft, a company led by Igor Sechin, said that in the first nine months of 2015 it produced 45.92 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas, increased from 40.87 bcm in the same period last year. On Friday, Gazprom reduced its 2015 forecasts to 427 bcm, a significant decrease on its forecasts released six months ago,which expected production for the year to reach 485 bcm.

Tehran and Baghdad today signed an 6-year agreement on November 11, aimed at exporting 25 million cubic meters per day (mcm/d) of Iranian gas to Iraq's Basra.

Crude oil production in December from seven major US shale plays is expected to drop 118,000 b/d to 4.95 million b/d.

“Russia plays a central role in the question of how we Europeans can secure our energy supply,” Schroeder, whose friendship with Russian President Vladimir Putin has been controversial in Germany, said at the Nov. 9 event. “Norway and Russia are the most secure and reliable energy partners for Europe.”

“Russia plays a central role in the question of how we Europeans can secure our energy supply. Norway and Russia are the most secure and reliable energy partners for Europe”, said the former German Chancellor.

The oil and gas industry has cut $200 billion from investments this year as low prices discourage new projects, leading to cuts in crude supplies equal to half the daily output of Saudi Arabia, according to the kingdom’s Prince Abdul Aziz bin Salman.

U.S. Rig Count is down 4 rigs from last week to 771, with oil rigs down 6 to 572, and gas rigs up 2 to 199. U.S. Rig Count is down 1,154 rigs from last year at 1,925, with oil rigs down 996, gas rigs down 157, and miscellaneous rigs down 1 rig. The U.S. Offshore rig count is 32, down 1 rig from last week, and down 21 rigs year over year.

The winter natural gas futures strip, the four contracts from December 2015 through March 2016, averaged $2.419 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) over the report week (Wednesday, October 28, through Wednesday, November 4). This is nearly 40% lower than the five-year average, and one-third lower than the five-year minimum in trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex).

The worldwide rig count for October 2015 was 2,086, down 85 from the 2,171 counted in September 2015, and down 1,571 from the 3,657 counted in October 2014.

“The efficiency of Japanese investments (alternative to those in Russia) is mostly very low. From what we know in the last 3 yeast Japanese firms faced almost 600 bln yen of write downs (around 6 bln USD) because of bad investments in projects associated with hard-to-recover hydrocarbons in US and Canada, and also because of unsuccessful projects in the North Sea. And this had to be done in a period of high oil prices! De-facto IRR for international upstream projects of INPEX by the end of 2014 was 3.1% (Wood Macikenzie estimates). This is around 4 times less than a standard revenue ratio”.