A survey of 13 investment banks by The Wall Street Journal cut their average forecast for Brent crude, the international price gauge, by $9 to $58.70 a barrel, compared with last month’s survey. For West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. oil marker, the average forecast is for $54.40 a barrel, also down $9 from August.

India is ready to invest more than $15.2 billion to build projects in Iran including taking up full-scale development of Chabahar Port if Tehran offers better terms including cheaper gas, Shipping Minister Nitin Gadkari said on Wednesday.

"The original Nord Stream was funded by project finance. We believe raising multi-billion dollar project financing for Nord Stream 2 in the capital markets would probably be much harder now. This is because Western sanctions have significantly hindered international funding to Russian corporates, even those not directly sanctioned," Fitch said.

Plunging oil prices have rendered more than a trillion dollars of future spending on energy projects uneconomic, according to a study that suggests that the impact on industry operators is worsening.

Oil rose by more than 1 percent on Monday after data showed U.S. drilling slowed and a report said $1.5 trillion worth of planned production was uneconomic at current prices.

Results from second-quarter 2015 financial statements of a number of U.S. companies with onshore oil operations suggest continued financial strain for some companies. Low oil prices have significantly reduced cash flow for U.S. oil producers, and to adjust to lower cash flows, companies have reduced capital expenditures and raised more cash from debt and equity.

Novak said the cost of shale oil production - between $45 and $60 per barrel - is seen as a benchmark for oil prices. He expects prices to be between $50 and $60 per barrel on average this year - in line with Russia's budget forecasts.

“When you look forward to 2017, the market looks much more in balance,”

Iran has projected average oil prices at $42 to $50 per barrel in a draft budget bill for the year to March 2017, a government spokesman was quoted as saying on Monday, expecting crude to stay in the current trading range.

Britain’s oil and gas platform builders are facing their worst downturn in orders for 25 years, threatening thousands of jobs across the UK.

Investors’s fears that Royal Dutch Shell will fail to complete its planned £43bn acquisition of BG Group have been exaggerated, Shell’s chief executive has said.

The latest tumble in the price of oil, which hit a six-year low in August, is expected to cut non-OPEC supply in 2016 by nearly 0.5 million barrels per day (mb/d) – the biggest decline in more than two decades.

With U.S. crude oil prices 47% lower in first-half 2015 compared to first-half 2014, U.S. onshore companies experienced a significant reduction in cash flow from operations. Most companies responded by reducing capital expenditures.

“Russia and OPEC have talked about cooperation in cutting production many times in the past, but the results of that were always dismal and disappointing,” said Nordine Ait-Laoussine, president of Geneva-based consultant Nalcosa and former energy minister of Algeria. “Russia has assumed that when oil prices go down, OPEC countries are in a weaker position and are more likely to be the first to cut its production, and they always did.”

Top oil exporter Saudi Arabia sees no need to hold a summit of producing countries' heads of state if such discussions would fail to produce concrete action toward defending oil prices, sources familiar with the matter said on Thursday.