BP Plc does not have to face U.S. lawsuits by energy and drilling companies over losses they suffered from an offshore drilling ban imposed soon after the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, a federal judge ruled. U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier in New Orleans agreed with BP that federal law absolved the British oil company from liability for the Obama administration’s decision to halt drilling and impose a moratorium on permits for new wells.

The Suez Canal was one of the most significant engineering projects of the 19th Century. It was a gargantuan task that took nearly 20 years to build and an estimated 1.5 million workers took part – with many thousands dying in the process. But when it finally opened in 1869, ships could travel from the Red Sea – between Africa and Asia – to the Mediterranean, cutting weeks off a journey. It was a revolution for trade.

Stealing the oil from a ship is no mean feat. Oil tankers are enormous, and ships that carry expensive cargo are designed to be difficult to board. Stealing can mean hijacking the original tanker, disabling its tracking devices, taking it to a location where it can’t be spotted, and transferring thousands of heavy barrels to a different vessel that can then be sailed away. Stealing crude also means finding a buyer for it, or else getting involved...

For half a century, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been the linchpin of U.S. Mideast policy. A guaranteed supply of oil has bought a guaranteed supply of security. Ignoring autocratic practices and the export of Wahhabi extremism, Washington stubbornly dubs its ally “moderate.” So tight is the trust that U.S. special operators dip into Saudi petrodollars as a counterterrorism slush fund without a second thought.

Venezuela has more oil than any other country on the planet. But it just bought a bunch of American crude. A ship carrying half a million barrels of oil that was pumped in the U.S. docked at a terminal owned by Venezuela last week, according to oil data research firm ClipperData. The shipment was sent to a facility located on the Dutch island of Curacao in the Caribbean.

On that day, the consumers were the only winners—kind of. As three Michigan gas stations aggressively battled for customers last week in an all-out price war, sending gas prices down to 47 cents per gallon—just pennies above the federal and state excise taxes—police had to step in to direct traffic, and Americans demonstrated just how serious they are about filling up for next to nothing.

As major oil companies fought efforts to address climate change, they were quietly safeguarding their own billion-dollar infrastructure from rising seas and warming temperatures.

“If anything happens to the riyal exchange peg, the consequences will be dramatic," warns the country's exchange rate guru. By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard.

As oil traders have learned time and again, picking a bottom in today's glutted global market can be a fool's game: just when prices start to rebound, as they have three times this year, a wave of renewed bearishness smacks them back down.

Russia is planning for oil prices to drop to $30 per barrel in 2016. The country's top finance official, Anton Siluanov, said the government must be prepared for prices to fall further in 2016 as the global glut grows and new supply -- for example from Iran -- enters the market. "Everything indicates that low oil prices are likely to dominate next year. And it is possible that at some periods [the oil price] will be $30 per barrel," Siluanov was quoted as saying...

Residents of a New Jersey town are questioning why a gas station is charging $3.98 per gallon while other area stations -- including one across the street -- price gas at $1.79. The Lukoil station in Voorhees has kept the $3.98 price since at least August, despite stations including the Citgo located directly across the street selling regular unleaded for $1.79 per gallon.

In April 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded and began spewing oil into the US Gulf Coast. In all, this released some 134 million gallons of crude over a span of almost three months. Eleven workers were killed in the nation's worst offshore oil spill. Today, federal prosecutors moved—and a judge agreed—to drop manslaughter charges against two supervisors aboard the Deepwater Horizon when it exploded.

Russian military officials laid out Wednesday what they say is "hard evidence" that Turkey is involved in an oil trade with ISIS, offering more detail on earlier claims that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has flatly denied. "We presented evidence how the illegal oil trade is carried out to finance the terrorist groups," Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov said, as reported by state-run Sputnik news. "We know how much Erdogan's words are worth."

In the outskirts of al-Omar oilfield in eastern Syria, with warplanes flying overhead, a line of trucks stretches for 6km. Some drivers wait for a month to fill up with crude. Falafel stalls and tea shops have sprung up to cater to the drivers, such is the demand for oil. Traders sometimes leave their trucks unguarded for weeks, waiting for their turn.

BP has agreed to pay out more than $20bn in compensation for the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The Justice Department and five US states finalised the deal that will settle all civil claims against the British energy giant and ends five years of legal fighting over the nearly 134m-gallon spill.

The Iranian government is earning more from tax than oil for the first time in almost half a century as the country shifts its traditional reliance on crude to taxation revenues in the face of plummeting oil prices. President Hassan Rouhani’s economic strategy is to significantly reduce the government’s dependency on oil and instead collect tax more systematically, according to Ali Kardor, the deputy managing director of the national Iranian oil company.

The world’s superpowers store an enormous stockpile of oil in secure caverns and tanks around the world. So why can’t we use it?

International energy watchdog’s new head, Fatih Birol, warns of costs and technological challenges but stops short of recommending an outright ban

At a meeting in Exxon Corporation's headquarters, a senior company scientist named James F. Black addressed an audience of powerful oilmen. Speaking without a text as he flipped through detailed slides, Black delivered a sobering message: carbon dioxide from the world's use of fossil fuels would warm the planet and could eventually endanger humanity.