Rosneft Board of Directors has approved a strategic cooperation agreement with Qatar Investment Authority and Glencore, providing for further cooperation in upstream projects, logistics and global trading.

The U.S. government is to check if sanctions where violated when Russia this week struck a deal to sell a stake in oil producer Rosneft to a consortium of Qatar's sovereign fund and commodities trader Glencore, the White House said.

Glencore and the sovereign wealth fund of Qatar are to take a 19.5 per cent stake in Russian oil company Rosneft in a surprise €10.5bn deal

The U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, through the Department of Commerce, announced today that the goods and services deficit was $42.6 billion in October, up $6.4 billion from $36.2 billion in September.

Russia has also benefited this year from oil's price stabilization and a recent deal between major crude producers to curb output has raised expectations of higher prices next year. The central bank has a medium-term oil price forecast of $40 a barrel.

Shares in US oil companies soared on Wednesday as Opec ministers meeting in Vienna agreed a plan to cut output by 1.2m barrels per day. “The biggest beneficiaries from this Opec move are the US shale players,” said Mike Kelly, head of exploration and production company research at Seaport Global Securities.

The expected fiscal consolidation and the subdued nature of the recovery are putting in place the conditions for the central bank to resume, in due course, monetary policy easing in a manner consistent with the 4 percent inflation target. However, the pace of easing should take into account the presence of external risks and the need to build credibility under the newly introduced inflation targeting regime.

Oil companies around the world have together added $630 billion to their market value this year, the biggest gain in six years following a 30 percent rise in benchmark Brent crude. This follows a $1.2 trillion loss in value last year and $790 billion in 2014 as crude prices plunged.

“Security and access to funding are the biggest challenges right now to private sector players,” says Kola Karim, managing director of domestic producer Shoreline Energy. “The situation is really tough.”

A particularly important aspect of this consolidation pertains to reforms in PEMEX, the state-owned oil company. Earlier this month, PEMEX released a five-year business plan that aims at turning the company profitable by 2020, through efficiency improvements and a focus on high-return activities.

Decisive steps particularly need to be taken to fight corruption, which remains the most frequently mentioned obstacle to doing business in Ukraine.

Nigeria, which was Africa's largest oil producer until a few months ago, slipped into recession after its economy shrank by 2.06% in Q2, as the impact of militant attacks on oil facilities weighed on the country's economy.

With its oil revenues slashed by low crude prices, the government of the world’s largest oil exporter has cut spending sharply this year and reduced or suspended payments owed to construction firms, medical establishments and even some of the foreign consultants who helped to design its economic reforms.

Russia’s decision earlier this year to engage in talks with OPEC about limiting oil output has added more than 400 billion rubles ($6 billion) to the nation’s budget, according to two officials familiar with government calculations.

Russia's oil and gas companies will continue to benefit from the weak rouble while avoiding a major tax hike in 2017, according to a new special report by Fitch Ratings.