Light, sweet crude prices for February delivery settled Jan. 7 below $34/bbl on the New York market, which was the lowest settlement for the front-month contract since February 2004. Brent crude oil for February also settled below $34/bbl on the London market Jan. 7.

More than $60 billion in unsolicited corporate takeover bids during 2015 were rejected, causing deal value to drop to a 10-year low. Aside from the Shell-BG deal, there were no corporate takeovers exceeding $5 billion. Fewer than 10 asset deals valued at greater than $1 billion occurred, following more than 30 annually during each of the previous 2 years.

Dow e-minis were down 380 points, or 2.26 percent, with 99,258 contracts changing hands at 8:13 a.m. ET (1313 GMT). S&P 500 e-minis were down 45 points, or 2.27 percent, with 578,860 contracts traded. Nasdaq 100 e-minis were down 130.25 points, or 2.93 percent, on volume of 108,831 contracts.

Crude oil prices ended 2015 below $40 per barrel (b), the lowest level since early 2009. Spot prices for the international crude oil benchmark Brent averaged $52/b in 2015, 53% below the level in 2014 and 49% below the average price over 2010-14. Spot prices for West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil were also down 53% in 2015 compared with 2014, averaging $49/b for the year.

"We will be more subtle in our approach and may gradually increase output," Qamsari said. "I have to say that there is no room to push prices down any further, given the level where they are."

While Iran enjoys the world's fourth-largest proven crude oil reserves and the world's second-largest natural gas reserves, its production and export potential has remained largely unutilized as a result of the nuclear related sanctions. The sanctions have had a major impact on Iran's energy industry and have caused a number of cancellations or delays in its oil and gas upstream projects.

West Texas Intermediate crude for February delivery declined to $36.58 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, after falling 0.8 percent Monday. U.S. crude inventories are forecast to keep supplies more than 130 million barrels above the five-year seasonal average, according to a Bloomberg survey before government data Wednesday.

While tens of thousands of jobs have already been cut in 2015, more redundancies are expected this year as companies narrow their focus.

Moody’s last month also projected average prices of West Texas Intermediate crude at $40/bbl in 2016, $45/bbl in 2017, and $50/bbl in 2018. The 2016 price is down $8/bbl from the firm’s earlier forecast.

Iran, which holds the world’s largest gas reserves, was aiming to double its gas production in the next 30 months and to raise its share of global cross-border gas trade from a minuscule one per cent at present to ten per cent at some unspecified future date. In production terms, this means increasing output from 172.6 bcm in 2014 (five per cent of the total world output) to around 350 bcm in 2018-19.

The changes come at a difficult time for the Saudi kingdom, which is still adjusting to last year's leadership transition while also facing pressure from regional rivals like Iran.

With no growth and no profits, the US exploration and production industry is facing a gruelling year. The gap between strong and weak companies is likely to widen. Those that have lower-cost production and healthier balance sheets should be able to stay in business. Those that have good assets but big debts may have to sell their most valuable properties. Those that have neither attractive assets nor strong finances will be heading for bankruptcy.

West Texas Intermediate (WTI) and Brent, two of the major crude oil benchmarks, account for about 69% of the weighting in the S&P GSCI Energy index. As a result, the energy index tends to follow major price movements in the crude oil market. With sustained, high crude oil production from countries like Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the United States, and Russia, global liquid fuel inventories rose significantly in 2015, resulting in crude oil prices falling to 11-year lows in December.

Global benchmark Brent crude prices fell 23 cents to $36.99 a barrel at 0910 GMT. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude slipped 7 cents to $36.69 a barrel.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 117.11 points, or 0.7%, to 17603.87. The S&P 500 fell 0.7% and the Nasdaq Composite lost 0.8%.