“We will be very gentle in our approach, so we don’t shock the market in any way,” Saudi Arabia’s new oil minister, Khalid Al-Falih, said before he sat down with his counterparts in Vienna on Thursday. “We are satisfied with the price movement over the last few months and think it will continue to gently edge up without much intervention, assuming that more or less OPEC production stays where it is.”

“We will be very gentle in our approach, so we don’t shock the market in any way,” Saudi Arabia’s new oil minister, Khalid Al-Falih, said before he sat down with his counterparts in Vienna on Thursday. “We are satisfied with the price movement over the last few months and think it will continue to gently edge up without much intervention, assuming that more or less OPEC production stays where it is.”

Banks are increasingly requiring U.S. oil and gas companies to maintain minimum levels of liquidity, an unusual step that could help reduce the risk of being exposed to companies struggling to maintain operations and repay debt.

Exxon Mobil Corp. may invest more than $10 billion in Argentina’s Vaca Muerta shale formation in the next decades, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Rex Tillerson said Thursday.

The closed transaction is symbolic for both the companies and marks transition to a new level of cooperation in the Russian-Indian relations in sphere of energy. ONGC gets substantial interest and relevant rights in one of the biggest large-scale projects of Rosneft of the last decade, whereas Rosneft retains major shares in the project and will operate on the field through the operator company RN-Vankor.

U.S. Rig Count is up 4 rigs from last week to 408, with oil rigs up 9 at 325, gas rigs down 5 to 82, and miscellaneous rigs unchanged at 1. Canadian Rig Count is down 2 rigs from last week to 41, with oil rigs down 1 to 13, gas rigs unchanged at 28, and miscellaneous rigs down 1 at 0.

Prices need to be at level above $50 a barrel for more crude supplies to come back to the market following a slump over the past two years, Khalid Al-Falih, Minister of Energy, Industry and Mineral Resources, told reporters in his suite in a Vienna hotel.

"The fact that OPEC agreed on its new management shows they want to regain their coordinating role. The cartel will perform market management again," Alekperov, chief executive of Russian energy firm Lukoil, said after meeting Falih and Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh separately in Vienna.

"The Council of Economic and Development Affairs has approved the final draft of the National Transformation Plan, which is one of the plans adopted and part of the 2030 vision, which was launched and adopted by the Saudi deputy crown prince, president of CEDA,"

While in Germany and Austria, the promoters of Nord Stream 2 are quite outspoken, in the Netherlands and France, there is recognizable, but more silent support in government circles. Here, as well, the main line of argu­mentation is based on the added value of infrastructure di­versification and the neutrality of political actors on eco­nomic activity in the market.

In 1Q 2016, LUKOIL Group total hydrocarbon production (including our share in equity affiliates) increased by 0.5% y-o-y and reached 214.2 mln boe. Crude oil and NGL production was 183 mln bbl (-0.2% y-o-y). On an organic basis (excluding the impact of divestment of certain producing assets in Kazakhstan in 2015), oil production was up by 0.6% y-o-y with production decline at mature fields in Western Siberia more than offset by an increase in production in Iraq and projects in Timan-Pechora, Ural region and Northern Caspian in Russia.

The global benchmark, Brent, gained 1.15% to reach $50.21 a barrel. Its U.S. counterpart, West Texas Intermediate, was trading up 1.13% at $49.17 a barrel.

У России и Катара имеется значительный потенциал для дальнейшего расширения бизнес-кооперации и выразил готовность оказывать всестороннее содействие и поддержку бизнес-сообществу двух государств. "Мы ставим задачу увеличить торговый оборот до 500 млн долларов США", - подчеркнул Александр Новак.

This arguably should have benefited the U.S. economy because lower gasoline prices aid consumers by lowering their fixed expenses. But the pain of investment losses largely outweighed the positive effects as investors from Main Street to pensions and foundations lent piles of money to speculative energy companies that looked increasingly fragile.

Еврокомиссия продолжает войну с «Газпромом», считает портфельный управляющий GL Asset Management Сергей Вахрамеев. По мнению заместителя гендиректора Фонда национальной энергобезопасности Алексея Гривача, газовые соглашения намеренно политизированы Брюсселем.

“South Africa’s oil refineries are not ready and will not be ready to produce Euro 4 standard fuel, let alone Euro 6, which the world is moving to by 2017 or 2020 in preparation for the introduction of more fuel-efficient vehicles,” he said in an opinion piece in Johannesburg-based Business Report newspaper Tuesday. “Our present crude-oil stocks are suitable for producing products of lower specifications, which means we need to stockpile higher-quality grades of crude oil.”

We expect to see robust demand for oil and gas for decades to come, in a global energy system in a long-term transition to lower carbon fuels. As well as low oil prices today, we are seeing higher levels of price volatility, due to geopolitical change, the speed of information flows, and the pace of innovation in our sector.

Modi also met Qatari businessmen and encouraged them to invest more in India, calling it "a land of opportunity." The Qatar Investment Authority has several large-scale investments in India, including a more than $1 billion stake in telecommunications company Bharati Airtel. Qatar Airways has expressed interest in expanding its routes to India and in buying a stake in budget airline IndiGo.

The worldwide rig count for May 2016 was 1,405, down 19 from the 1,424 counted in April 2016, and down 722 from the 2,127 counted in May 2015.

Brent crude oil prices are forecast to average $43/b in 2016 and $52/b in 2017, $3/b and $1/b higher than forecast in last month's STEO, respectively. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil prices are forecast to be slightly lower than Brent in 2016 and to be the same as Brent in 2017.