BRENT CRUDE OIL FUTURES FALL $1 TO $64.20 PER BARREL.

Iraq doesn't want to be caught in a "tug of war" between the United States and Iran, Majid Jafar, CEO of Crescent Petroleum, told CNBC.

U.S. natural gas prices fell below $2/MMBtu on Friday for the first time in nearly four years. The gas market is suffering from oversupply, as the shale industry has drilled the market into another bust. The share prices for top gas players were deep into red territory on Friday. Range Resources, for instance, was off by more than 8 percent. The story has been the same for quite a while. Natural gas production has surged more or less for a decade, and much of it was soaked up by new gas-fired power plants, new petrochemical facilities, or otherwise…

Tough times are continuing for Alberta’s oil and gas country, with the amount of unpaid property taxes that oil and gas companies owe to Alberta towns has more than doubled over the course of just a year. The total tax debt outstanding? $173 million—a 114% increase from this time last year as the industry comes up short thanks to patches of huge gaps between the price of West Texas Intermediate and Western Canadian Select oil benchmarks, and production curtailments to producers in an attempt to keep that gap in check. And now, oil and…

Libya’s oil operations have been dealt a blow during the last 24 hours, after local Libyan tribes, allies of Libya’s General Haftar’s LNA, disrupted production at the El Feel and Sharara fields and blocked the transportation of crude oil to the Zawiya export terminal. The fields, producing 70,000 and 300,000 bpd, are the country’s main producing fields. Haftar’s allies acted while France, Italy, Germany, Russia, Turkey and several others gathered in Berlin to discuss a possible ceasefire between the Tripoli based and…

Saudi Arabia’s economy is expected to grow by 1.9 percent this year, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said on Monday, revising down its forecast of 2.2-percent growth from just three months ago, due to expected lower Saudi oil production as the Kingdom has pledged to overcomply with the OPEC+ oil production cuts. In its January update of the World Economic Outlook (WEO) from October, the IMF cut on Monday its economic growth projections for the global economy and that in the Middle East and Central Asia region. Economic growth in the…

Over and above its OPEC+ deal quota – with which it has only ever been marginally acquainted, at best – Iraq’s ambition to dramatically increase its oil production is now at a crucial point. Until only very recently, Iraq was rolling along, merrily breaking its previous and current OPEC+ production quota in producing oil in the 4.5-4.7 million barrels per day (bpd) range as and when it could. Its oil production targets of 6.2 million bpd by the end of 2020 and 9 million bpd by the end of 2023 looked relatively realistic in size,…

The world’s newest oil frontier, Guyana, has officially shipped its very first batch of crude oil on Monday, according to TankerTrackers.com—a major oil-first for the South American country. The first batch of oil—a million barrels of Liza sweet crude oil—is currently on a Suezmax tanker Yannis P headed for the United States, Tanker Trackers said. The Liza field is co-owned by Hess Corp (NYSE: HES), China’s CNOOC, and operator ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM)—who is the envy of all oil companies at the moment for 15 mouthwatering…

What happens to world markets when China buys an additional $50 billion-plus in U.S. energy products over the next two years? For some analysts, as spectacular as this may sound to fossil fuel bulls, at best, it’s unrealistic. After months of negotiations, the United States and China have finally agreed to and signed a phase-one trade agreement between the world’s two largest economies. The agreement would see China purchase billions of dollars’ worth of oil, coal, and LNG, to the tune of $52 billion—a scenario that if fulfilled,…

Occidental Petroleum’s (NYSE:OXY) management has been pummeled since the deal with Anadarko Petroleum was announced last spring. Investors and stock analysts alike decried the purchase as being a “value destroyer,” lambasting OXY’s leadership in the process. Of course, over the short run, they’ve been right. OXY’s stock fell from the upper $60’s to the middle $30’s as the deal closed. The magnitude of the deal, the early potential for a fight with Chevron (NYSE:CVX) and the surprise $10 billion buy-in…