
With oil prices low and showing no sign of an immediate rebound, the industry is beginning to pull back on spending. Oil prices have dropped around 30% since summer highs, raising fears among producers across the globe.

West Texas Intermediate, WTI crude closed at a three-year low on Wednesday with prices under pressure from the growing oil glut created by the U.S. shale boom and the restart of Libya's largest operational oilfield.

Transocean Ltd, the owner of the world's largest offshore drilling fleet, said it was likely to retire additional rigs as the company continued to face pressure due to slowdown in an oversupplied rig market.

The Argentine unit of Brazilian state-controlled oil giant Petrobras plans to invest 622 million dollars to explore for non-conventional natural gas in Neuquen, the Argentine government announced on Monday.

UK Minister for Latin America, Hugo Swire, spoke of the growing presence of UK in Latin America and more specifically on the expanding links with Paraguay. Minister Swire said UK was determined to deepen its commercial ties with a rising Latin America and described Paraguay as a perfect trade and investment partner for UK, particularly since British oil industry has struck oil in the Chaco region.

Energy ministers from the Latin American Energy Organization, OLADE, meeting in San Salvador approved last Friday a statement on Malvinas Islands sovereignty referred to the illegal hydrocarbons exploration and exploitation undertaken in the Islands surrounding waters, points out a release from the Argentine Foreign ministry.

Brazil raised domestic wholesale gasoline and diesel prices for the first time in more than 11 months effective Friday in a move to bolster the finances of the heavily indebted Petrobras oil and gas company after years of refining losses.

The elected government of the Falkland Islands has strongly refuted remarks by Argentine official 'Malvinas Secretary' Daniel Filmus, published in The Guardian, in which he states that hydrocarbons activities in the Falklands are environmentally reckless, and describes Filmus words as “yet another example of the Argentine's government futile efforts to damage the Falklands economy”

Argentina's state-controlled oil firm YPF hydrocarbons' production in the third quarter increased by 15.4% from a year earlier to 573,000 b/d of oil equivalent (boe/d). The rise in production translates into a 13.9% increase from a year earlier for the first nine months of the year to 553,000 boe/d.

Recent trade deals and high-level cooperation between Russia and China have set off alarm bells in the West as policymakers and oil and gas executives watch the balance of power in global energy markets shift to the East.