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...

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

Or How Texaco Supported Fascism. By Adam Hochschild.

Earthquakes are a natural hazard — except when they're man-made. The oil and gas industry has aggressively adopted the technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to shatter subsurface shale rock and liberate the oil and gas lurking there. But the process results in tremendous amounts of chemical-laden wastewater. Horizontal drilling for oil can also produce massive amount of natural, unwanted salt water.

In the list of the world's great companies, Unaoil is nowhere to be seen. But for the best part of the past two decades, the family business from Monaco has systematically corrupted the global oil industry, distributing many millions of dollars worth of bribes on behalf of corporate behemoths including Samsung, Rolls-Royce, Halliburton and Australia's own Leighton Holdings.

The world’s dependence on oil is fading, and Saudi Arabia doesn’t want to get left behind. The kingdom will build a $2 trillion sovereign wealth fund to slowly but unmistakably transform its economy for a post-oil world, Bloomberg reported Friday morning. The news was delivered by Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman during a five-hour interview at his royal compound that stretched until 4 a.m. local time.

The worldwide reliance on burning fossil fuels to create energy could be phased out in a decade, according to an article published by a major energy think tank in the UK. Professor Benjamin Sovacool, Director of the Sussex Energy Group at the University of Sussex, believes that the next great energy revolution could take place in a fraction of the time of major changes in the past. But it would take a collaborative, interdisciplinary, multi-scalar effort to get there, he warns.

Sunday, April 17th was the designated moment. The world’s leading oil producers were expected to bring fresh discipline to the chaotic petroleum market and spark a return to high prices. Meeting in Doha, the glittering capital of petroleum-rich Qatar, the oil ministers of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), along with such key non-OPEC producers as Russia and Mexico, were scheduled to ratify a draft agreement obliging them to freeze their oil...

Brine spills from oil development in western North Dakota are releasing toxins into soils and waterways, sometimes at levels exceeding federal water quality standards, scientists reported Wednesday. Samples taken from surface waters affected by waste spills in recent years in the state's Bakken oilfield region turned up high levels of lead, ammonium, selenium and other contaminants, Duke University researchers said.

Hydraulic fracturing, the method used to extract oil and natural gas from shale formations deep underground, has gone from a niche activity to the process responsible for more than two-thirds of U.S. gas supply. Fracking now accounts for 67 percent of marketed gas output, up from less than 7 percent in 2000, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Saudi Arabia is in serious trouble. The Binladin Group, the kingdom’s largest construction company, has terminated the employment of fifty thousand foreign workers. They have been issued exit visas, which they have refused to honor. These workers will not leave without being paid back wages. Angry with their employer, some of the workers set fire to seven of the company’s buses.

An abandoned oil tanker has mysteriously washed ashore in Liberia leaving officials scratching their heads as to how it got there and what exactly happened to its crew. According to local reports the vessel emblazoned with the name Tamaya 1 was discovered washed up on a beach in Robertsport, Liberia on Wednesday with no sign of any crew. AIS data from MarineTraffic.com shows the Tamaya 1 is a 63-meter oil products tanker flagged in Panama.