Royal Dutch Shell said Thursday it will cut 6,500 jobs as it braces for up to several years of low oil prices.

Italian services firm Saipem said Tuesday it will cut 8,800 jobs during the next two years after booking about $1 billion in write downs in the second quarter and slashing its annual guidance.

BP swung to a $6.3 billion second quarter loss on Tuesday after write downs tied to the ongoing conflict in Libya and the company’s recent Deepwater Horizon settlement.

Weatherford International boosted its headcount reduction target by 1,000 on Thursday to 11,000 positions.

Fifteen nations, more than half of them from the former Soviet bloc, endorsed an action plan to improve energy infrastructure and ultimately to ensure each of them maintains three separate sources of supply. Ministers meeting in Dubrovnik, Croatia, with Maros Sefcovic, the European Commission’s vice president in charge of energy union, chose seven gas link projects that should be sped up and that may be eligible for financial support.

This month the head of the EBRD said the bank could invest hundreds of millions of dollars in Ukraine's energy sector this year, but that any investment would depend on Kiev implementing long-promised energy sector reforms.

For many years, Russia has advocated that the frequent gas interruptions are the fault of transit states such as Ukraine, whom the Kremlin sees as unreliable. As a result, Gazprom rolled out several pipeline projects that would bypass Ukraine altogether and provide a direct route to its customer base in Europe.

Falcon Oil & Gas Ltd. is pleased to announce the spudding of the Kalala S-1 well in the Beetaloo Basin, Australia. Kalala S-1 is the first of Falcon's fully funded and uncapped, 2015 three well drilling and evaluation programme in the Beetaloo Basin. The 2015 three well programme is the commencement of a nine well exploration and appraisal programme planned from 2015 to 2018.

U.S. Rig Count is up 1 rig from last week to 863, with oil rigs up 5 to 645, gas rigs down 2 to 217, and miscellaneous rigs down 2 to 1.

Over the past decade, domestic refinery output of petroleum products has grown significantly while consumption has declined, resulting in a major increase in product exports. Petroleum product exports averaged 4.1 million barrels per day (b/d) in the first four months of the year, an increase of 0.5 million b/d over exports the same time last year. Product imports are also higher than last year, but to a lesser extent, leading to an increase in net petroleum product exports.