Norway's minority government proposed on Thursday to temporarily change tax rules for oil firms in a bid to prevent a collapse in investments amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Prime Minister Erna Solberg said on Thursday.

Prices have collapsed and storage is nearly full. The only option for many producers is to shut in their wells. That means no income. Most have considerable debt so bankruptcy is next.

Corallian Energy, with its partners Upland Resources and Baron Oil, has signed a work-sharing agreement with a "large European E&P company" that might lead to a farm-out of a stake in the offshore license P2478 in the Inner Moray Firth, Scotland, UK.

In the last couple of months, the global energy industry has been flipped on its head. As the novel coronavirus pandemic ravaged economies around the world, the energy industry took a particularly brutal hit, made infinitely worse by an oil price war between the leading OPEC+ countries of Saudi Arabia and Russia.

BP’s first quarter earnings plunged by two-thirds, and its debt levels rose to a record high.

Mexico has somewhat inadvertently found itself at the heart of the oil industry’s most burning issues of 2020

Saudi Aramco began reducing oil production earlier this week ahead of the May 1 start date for OPEC+ output cuts, according to a Saudi industry official familiar with the matter.

The U.S. is investigating whether traders with inside information on Russia’s negotiations with other oil producing nations made hundreds of millions of dollars from illegal wagers on crude price swings, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter.

Malaysia called on Thursday for disputes over the South China Sea to be resolved by peaceful means, amid a standoff between Chinese and Malaysian vessels that a U.S. think tank said had been going on for months.

Oilfield firm Baker Hughes Co reported a $10 billion loss and lower-than-expected revenue in the first quarter on Wednesday as an 80% plunge in oil prices crushed demand for services and equipment.