China's total oil imports rose about 20 percent on year to the highest ever on a daily basis in February, when near 10-year low global oil prices drove buying from a group of new importers and for state and commercial stockpiling.

“Low oil prices fuel a reduction in risk-taking, and when there is less risk-taking, asset prices will fall. It can lead to a downward asset price spiral,”

Europe’s leaders have long been hoping that U.S. shale gas would help the bloc reduce its reliance on gas from Russia, which provides around a third of the region’s supplies. The ethane from Ineos’s shipment won’t be a substitute for Russian gas, which is mostly methane, but it will help to lower prices in the European market, said Karen Sund, partner at Norway-based Sund Energy consultancy.

Europe and Russia are each trying to diversify—the first by getting more gas suppliers, and the second by trying to sell more gas to China and East Asia.

India is replacing China as the center of the world’s oil demand growth as its economy expands faster than any other major country and Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made energy security a priority for the nation, which imports 80 percent of its oil requirements.

Gasoline production is set to grow in 2016 due to the commissioning of Indian Oil Corp.'s 2.9 million mt/year continuous catalytic reformer at its greenfield 15 million mt/year (300,000 b/d) Paradip refinery, and completion of Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd.'s gasoline capacity expansion at its Kochi refinery by 6 million mt/year to 15.5 million mt/year (310,000 b/d) sometime in May.

Federal lawyers on Tuesday formally asked a judge in New Orleans to approve a record-breaking $20 billion-plus settlement agreement announced last July by the Department of Justice and five Gulf Coast states to resolve years of legal fighting about the 2010 Gulf oil spill.

“We furnish 20 percent of China’s crude oil imports – about one million barrels a day. But there’s a significant gap in what we are doing now, and what we can offer,” Nasser said. “Our investments in China’s entire oil value chain – integrating supply, refining, chemicals, lubes, distribution and marketing – don’t match our supply.”

It is a challenging business environment but it's a sign of strong resilience that businesses can look ahead and still see opportunities that exist around the globe.

More than $400 billion of proposed energy projects have been delayed since mid-2014 and pushed into 2017 and beyond as oil prices slid about 60 percent in the past two years, according to consulting firm Wood Mackenzie Ltd. The LNG market in particular is facing an oversupply as U.S. exports add to a wave of shipments from Australia.

PetroChina Co Ltd on Wednesday said profit fell 70 percent last year as low prices brought down upstream earnings, eclipsing the impact of a jump in natural gas income brought about in part by pipeline consolidation.

Neil Atkinson, head of the IEA’s Oil Industry and Markets Division, said in Singapore on Wednesday. About $300 billion is needed to sustain the current level of production, and nations including the U.S., Canada, Brazil, and Mexico are facing difficulty in keeping up investments, he said.

В 2015 году общий объем просроченной задолженности увеличился на 19,8% — со 127 млрд до 152,1 млрд руб., уровень расчетов за газ снизился на 1,4% — до 96,2%. Задолженность в основном сформирована населением, теплоснабжающими организациями и предприятиями электроэнергетики. Более 80% задолженности населения страны формируется потребителями Северо-Кавказского федерального округа (по состоянию на 1 января 2016 года — 48,6 млрд руб. или 81,4% от суммарной задолженности населения РФ).

Были рассмотрены стратегические направления двустороннего сотрудничества. Отмечено, что взаимодействие «Газпрома» с китайскими энергетическими компаниями и финансовыми организациями последовательно развивается.

U.S. Rig Count is down 12 rigs from last week to 464, with oil rigs down 15 to 372, and gas rigs up 3 to 92. Canadian Rig Count is down 14 rigs from last week to 55, with oil rigs down 1 to 11, and gas rigs down 13 to 44.

Revenue during the year fell by 20.9% to $1,668.8 million (2014: $2,110.9 million) reflecting activity reductions as spending by our customers has reduced, pricing pressures, reduced spend on reimbursable type contracts and changes in mix between our business units. EBITDA decreased by 7.9% to $289.8 million over the same period as the impact of these lower revenues was offset by significant reductions made to our cost base.

Persistently low oil prices complicate the conduct of monetary policy, risking further inroads by unanchored inflation expectations. What is more, the current episode of historically low oil prices could ignite a variety of dislocations including corporate and sovereign defaults, dislocations that can feed back into already jittery financial markets. The possibility of such negative feedback loops makes demand support by the global community—along with a range of country-specific structural and financial-sector reforms—all the more urgent.

Germany consumed 5% more gas and its imports were 13% higher than in 2014. But the surprising statistic is that its 2015 exports of gas grew by 35% year-on-year to top 30bn m3.

It says that two thirds of the gas will flow towards the Central European Gas Hub in Baumgarten, Austria. “This hub offers ideal connectivity and can handle large flows to central, east, southeast and south European countries, boosting their gas markets to comparable levels of liquidity and competiveness as in northwest Europe.”

In 2015, the seven biggest publicly traded Western energy companies, including Exxon Mobil Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell PLC, replaced just 75% of the oil and natural gas they pumped, on average, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of company data. It was the biggest combined drop in inventory that companies have reported in at least a decade.