Halliburton Co. , the world’s second-largest oilfield-services company, said Thursday it will lay off 1,000 employees outside the U.S.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

On December 18, Rosneft’s Board of Directors reviewed preliminary results of the Company’s performance in 2014 and approved the 2015-2016 plan.

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.

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.

The main outcome of Putin’s visit to Turkey was the announcement that the $40 billion South Stream gas pipeline project would be cancelled. The effects of this cancellation on Russia and Turkey differ, even though the project was interpreted as a rapprochement of their strategic visions.

Israel made another discovery off its coast. The newly discovered field, Royee, may hold up to 3.2 Tcf of natural gas according to a statement made by the Israeli partners in the field Ratio and Israel Opportunity who hold respectively 70%, and 10% stakes.

Shale gas was supposed to be Ukraine’s ticket to greater energy independence from Russia. Chevron Corp. (CVX)’s decision to pull the plug has smashed those hopes.

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.

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.

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

The Russian Foreign Ministry denounced new Western sanctions against Ukraine's Crimea region on Saturday as a "collective punishment" on local residents who voted in a referendum last March to join Russia.

Total SA and its partners will use a record 16 ice-breaking tankers to smash through floes en route to and from the Arctic’s biggest liquefied natural-gas development.

BP Plc is in talks to buy a direct stake in an East Siberian oil producer from OAO Rosneft, the Russian oil producer facing U.S. and European financing bans, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter.