U.S. oil and gas companies have been an engine of growth through much of an otherwise lackluster economic expansion, providing steady employment, solid wages and fierce competition for workers across wide swaths of the country.

OPEC will need to “step in” amid further declines in oil prices, which are fair at about $70 to $80 a barrel, according to the group’s second-biggest producer.

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.

Saudi Arabia and OPEC would find it “difficult, if not impossible” to give up market share by cutting crude production, the country’s oil minister said.

U.S. oil drillers pulled rigs this week as crude traded below $60 a barrel for the seventh straight day.

Crude prices surged from the lowest closing levels since May 2009 as comments from Saudi Arabia’s oil minister yesterday added to the most volatile market in three years.

Over and over again, they keep insisting on their Third Energy Package, which the Russian leaders refer to as ‘a very harmful document’, and want Gazprom to unbundle its gas supplying, transporting and marketing businesses; share pipeline space with other gas producers; obey independent regulators and transmission operators; and drop manipulations with prices.

America’s oil and gas boom was enabled by a huge pile of cheap financing.

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.

For now it is only a distant rumble, but many oil executives and advisers believe they can hear it coming: a gusher of oil deals that is set to erupt next year.

Turmoil gripped global foreign exchange markets on Tuesday, driving investors to the safety of the yen and the Swiss franc as Russia's rouble went into a tailspin and oil prices fell below $60 a barrel.

OPEC Gulf members and crisis-hit producer Russia held the line on resisting oil output cuts, a message that helped send oil to a fresh five-year low on Tuesday.

Crude oil prices are poised to fall below half where they were six months ago, before producers begin dealing with a global glut.

Мы ожидаем, что цены на нефть будут находиться на уровне в среднем 80 долл. за баррель в следующие три года. Такое значение средней цены следует из консенсус-прогноза ведущих аналитиков.