The Fallout from Lower Oil Prices

As most of Russia’s energy exports go to the European Union, both players are strongly interdependent. For Russia, energy resources, especially gas, are viewed as a tool to project power beyond its borders.

Capital spending budgets are being cut back, drilling rigs idled and staff laid off. The remarkable growth of US oil production, which brought more than 1m barrels per day of additional supply on to world markets in each of the past three years, seems likely to flatten out this year.

In December Saudi Arabia’s oil minister Ali al-Naimi posed an interesting question: “Is there a black swan out there that we don’t know about which will come by 2050 and we will have no demand?”

The International Monetary Fund on Wednesday approved a bigger, high-risk bailout for Ukraine, giving Kiev immediate access to $5 billion of $17.5 billion in emergency IMF credit in another bid to keep the embattled country afloat.

Russia’s bid for Turkish Stream pipeline may open the gates to the competition it most fears

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.

Robust recovery in the United States, a moribund euro zone and slowing Chinese growth reflect global splits which plunging oil prices are likely to widen.

The halving of oil prices over the past six months has caught pretty much every economist by surprise and prompted a rush to explain the reasons behind this astounding drop and the consequences for the global economy .

Plunging oil prices have sparked a big rally in Asian government bond markets as lower fuel costs cut inflation expectations, but the rally could be built on shallow foundations as monetary policymakers remain out of step with tumbling bond yields.

World's largest oil exporter is forcing prices lower to win back market share but the high-risk strategy will test the house of Saud like never before

The Availability and Price of Petroleum and Petroleum Products Produced in Countries Other Than Iran

EIA estimates that members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), excluding Iran, will earn about $700 billion in revenue from net oil exports in 2014, a 14% decrease from 2013 earnings and the lowest earnings for the group since 2010. OPEC earnings declined in 2014 largely for two reasons: decreases in the amount of OPEC oil exports and lower oil prices, with the 2014 average for Brent crude oil projected to be 8% below the average 2013 price.

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.

The fallout from Russia's decision to abandon its ambitious South Stream pipeline deal continued Dec. 3, as Italian energy services firm Saipem announced that it would lose almost $2 billion because of Moscow's move