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.

The Anglo-Dutch energy giant is betting on crude rising to $90 a barrel by 2020, a key assumption in its move to buy rival BG Group (BG.L) for $70 billion to help transform it into a leading player in the costly deepwater oil production and liquefied natural gas (LNG) markets.

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.

Rotterdam, Europe's largest port, said on Thursday that plans to build a Russian-backed 3 million cubic meter oil storage terminal had been canceled after its Russian partner raised concerns over the project's feasibility.

Schlumberger Ltd.'s second-quarter earnings fell 30% on plunging revenue, as the oil-services sector continues to grapple with weak oil prices.

Low oil prices have tightened the screws on some of the most depleted and costly oilfields in Britain's North Sea, forcing operators to cease production earlier than planned and adding to fears of a domino effect in mature areas.

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.

Crude oil production in August from seven major US shale plays is expected to decline 91,000 b/d to 5.36 million b/d.

Russia’s Rosneft and Norway’s Statoil completed drilling works as part of the Pilot Project at the PK1 layer of the North-Komsomolskoye field in Purovsky and Nadymsky regions of Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District.

OPEC pumped 31.28 million barrels per day in June, the fourth straight month since February that the group has added production.