RINs prices moving up. The second sign is the rising price of Renewable Identification Numbers (RINs). RINs are used by the government to ensure that ethanol and biodiesel are being blended into gasoline. If a refiner does not have enough biofuel to meet demand then they must purchase RINs to meet the environmental requirements. There is currently a price spike in RINs, which suggests that refiners continue to see surging demand for gasoline. If the term RINs rings a bell, you might be a market junkie and may require professional help … but you are also an astute observer and recall that the 15 percent jump in oil prices during the summer of 2013 was the result of surging RINs prices. Since RINs prices are an input cost, it stands to reason that the cost of gasoline will also rise.

Here's why an oil bottom may be in sight—commentary

Oversupply in crude markets could take months or even years to fix depending on when producers outside OPEC cut their output, Abu Dhabi-based The National reported, citing comments by U.A.E. Energy Minister Suhail Al Mazrouei.

Oil glut could take years to fix, U.A.E. Energy Minister says

The first tanker to ship LNG from BG Group Plc’s $20.4 billion project on Australia’s east coast is sailing to Singapore where it will dock Jan. 15.

LNG from BG Group's QCLNG project heading to Singapore

Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s state oil company, is raising prices for its Asian customers but lowering them for Europe, a move that may muddy any understanding of the kingdom’s oil strategy.

Saudi Arabia Has Launched An Oil Price Offensive - Business Insider

Oil will bottom in the mid-$40s and Saudi Arabia will begin to curb production "pretty soon," Rocky Mount Resources CEO Chad Brownstein told CNBC Thursday. That means there is an opportunity now for investors to dip their toe in the water and buy certain names in the oil services sector, he said.

Time to buy these oil plays: Pro - Yahoo Finance

McDonald, of Newedge USA in New York, got his clients long oil through the Brent Oil Fund, ticker 'BNO,' but said the U.S. Oil Fund, ticker 'USO' would work as well.

Chart of the day: Oil freak fall can’t continue

Representatives of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait stressed a dozen times in the past six weeks that the group won’t curb output to halt the biggest drop in crude since 2008. Qatar’s estimate for the global oversupply is among the biggest of any producing country. These countries actually want -- and are achieving -- further price declines as part of an attempt to hasten cutbacks by U.S. shale drillers, according to Barclays Plc and Commerzbank AG.

Why OPEC Is Talking Oil Down, Not Up, After 48% Selloff - Bloomberg

The oil plummet is rippling beyond the energy sector and into other areas of the economy, according to Yahoo's Jeff Macke. Macke noted construction equipment giant Caterpillar was downgraded this week to "underweight" at JPMorgan Chase, in part because of its close ties to the oil and gas industry.

Yahoo's Macke: 'No Sign of a Real Bottom Yet' in Oil

"The faster you bring the price down, the quicker you will have a response from U.S. production -- that is the expectation and the hope," said Jamie Webster, an analyst at consultants IHS Inc. in Washington. "I cannot recall a time when several members were actively pushing the price down in both word and deed."

How OPEC Weaponized the Price of Oil Against U.S. Drillers - Yahoo Finance

With the collapse in oil prices, energy stocks may seem like the last place you'd want to be, but one strategist says they could be the sleeper hit of 2015. The S&P 500 Energy Index's historical performance shows that energy stocks have never fallen for two consecutive years in a non-recessionary environment, David Rosenberg, chief economist and strategist at Gluskin Sheff & Associates told CNBC on Thursday.

Why energy stocks may be the sleeper hit of 2015

Baker Hughes has announced that the U.S. onshore well count for the fourth quarter of 2014 was 9,544 wells, relatively unchanged compared to the third quarter of 2014.  However, compared to the fourth quarter of 2013, the well count was up 461 wells or 5%.

Fourth-quarter well count up from 2013, Baker Hughes says

Inpex-operated Ichthys LNG project remains above break-even point, despite the drop in oil prices.  According to the company’s president and CEO Toshiaki Kitamura, Inpex has full confidence in the project’s profitability.

Ichthys LNG project unaffected by oil slump | LNG World News

The government of Western Australia decided not to revise the decision from 2013 to waive the state’s emissions restrictions for Chevron’s Wheatstone LNG project. The decision was repealed in July last year, but as Albert Jacob, WA Environment Minister, told Interfax, no reviewing or reapplying of the greenhouse gas emission conditions, removed by Jacob’s predecessor, will happen.

WA frees Wheatstone LNG from emissions restrictions | LNG World News

TheStreet's Jim Cramer is warning investors to be very careful with oil. He says we're getting a series of really interesting and contrary numbers. On one hand, he explains, we're seeing capital expenditure budgets just being slashed. On the other hand, the production output is still going higher. Cramer says that means in 2015 we're going to have more oil coming on and add to that the oil coming from the Gulf of Mexico this year. So you may think that with all these budget cuts there's going to be less oil produced, but it's just not playing out that way. Bottom line, Cramer says, don't run out and buy the oils, you have plenty of time to buy.

Jim Cramer: No Signs of U.S. Oil Production Slowing Down - Video - TheStreet

With oil prices dropping to five-year lows, pundits are pushing conspiracy theories about OPEC, public investors are acting irrationally, oil companies are going deeper into debt and political leaders are considering previously untouchable ideas like a gas tax. Meanwhile, many people are asking if an extended period of $50-per-barrel oil will compromise the economics of renewables. In this week’s episode, we’ll look at the spectrum of economic and political consequences from oil’s continued price slide.

Understanding the Oil Price Drop: What Does $50-per-Barrel Oil Mean? : Greentech Media

According to Navigant Research, global annual NGV sales are expected to grow from 2.5 million vehicles in 2014 to 4.3 million in 2024…

NewEnergyNews: SHALE GAS TO DRIVE NAT GAS VEHICLE BOOM

The U.S. exported a record amount of crude oil in November after a five-year run of production growth that has made the country the most oil-independent in 20 years. Shipments surged 34% to average 502,000 bopd in November, the most on record dating back to 1920, data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Energy Information Administration show. The previous peak was 455,000 in March 1957. The U.S. is now the 17th-largest exporter.

Oil exports from U.S. jump 34% to record as shale output booms

Oil prices have almost bottomed out and “some recovery” is likely by the second half of the year as demand picks up, commodity hedge fund manager Andrew J. Hall told investors. Crude could trade in the $40/bbl range in 2015, close to “an absolute price floor,” the head of Astenbeck Capital Management wrote in a Jan. 2 letter obtained by Bloomberg News. A significant amount of U.S. and Canadian production can’t cover the cash costs of operating at that price, he said.

Oil trader Andy Hall sees $40/bbl price floor and 2015 recovery

Just 1 percent of employment growth in the past four years has come from oil jobs, 2 percent if you include oil-related jobs. "Those two numbers, 290 million and 2 percent, tell you that the vast, and I mean vast, majority of Americans see a huge benefit from this decline in crude. It's basically the equivalent of a gigantic tax cut," said the "Mad Money" host.

Don't freak out! Here are the facts on oil

Oil renewed its decline on Monday, dropping below $49 a barrel as Goldman Sachs slashed its short-term price forecasts and Gulf producers showed no signs of curbing output.

Oil extends fall; Goldman Sachs cuts forecasts - Yahoo Finance

Global oil markets resumed their slide on Friday, with Brent and U.S. crude hitting April 2009 lows and ending down for a seventh straight week, although prices recovered from their lows after a sharp drop in the U.S. oil rig count.

Oil hits April 2009 low, then pares loss on U.S. oil rig data - Yahoo Finance

As oil prices plummeted, investors started buying more shares of companies with close ties to the industry. “At the end of the year the big story was energy. I think some of it was trying to call the bottom. They were looking at oil producers that paid a higher yield. I think that was a valuation play,”

Retail investors predict a bottom for oil: Nicole Sherrod - Yahoo Finance

The global oil sector is getting increasingly squeezed by the slump in oil prices and future investments worth trillions of dollars are at risk of being scrapped unless the industry succeeds in consolidating and cutting costs, according to analysts at Goldman Sachs.

Oil’s slump could upend $2 trillion in investments: Goldman - MarketWatch

After six straight months of plunging oil prices, U.S. shale drillers have sent the clearest signal to date that they’re retreating. Horizontal rigs, their weapon of choice for reaching oil deposits in tight-rock formations such as North Dakota’s Bakken shale and Texas’s Permian Basin, slid by 35. It was the biggest single-week drop since a drilling boom touched off six years ago that propelled domestic production to the highest level in three decades and eventually helped trigger the global price war that the U.S. and OPEC find themselves in today.

Shale drillers signal retreat as most rigs idled since 1991

Petrobras is expanding its oil and natural gas production capacity in the Brazilian pre-salt layer in an economically viable manner, the company said in response to a recent press report. The company says that its break-even price, planned at the moment when its pre-salt production projects were approved, is around $45/bbl, including taxes and not including natural gas transportation infrastructure spending. Inclusion of the latter spending may raise the total figure by $5 to $7/bbl.

Pre-salt is still economically viable, Petrobras says

The plunge in global crude oil prices has helped boost U.S. natural gas imports to a five-year high, even as the country prepares to start exporting cargoes. Deliveries to onshore pipelines from LNG terminals in Massachusetts and Maryland on Jan. 7 were the most since Jan. 10, 2010, according to Ventyx data compiled by Bloomberg. Volumes in January are more than six times higher than a year ago, when the polar vortex spurred record consumption.

Oil plunge boosts U.S. natural gas imports to five-year high

The state’s only nuclear plant has stopped sending power to the New England grid after more than 42 years of producing electricity. Bill Mohl, president of Entergy Wholesale Commodities, said economic factors were the primary reasons for the shutdown.

Shale economics shuts down nuclear plant

New exploration on the bulk of Canada’s oil sands reserves can’t start unless prices are at least $60 per barrel, economists say.

At These Oil Prices, Keystone Pipeline Makes No Sense | MIT Technology Review

Investment banks that have profited from the oil and gas boom may feel the pain as the repercussions of tumbling oil prices hit their bottom lines.

10 Investment Banks that Stand to Lose the Most from Oil's Decline - TheStreet

If oil prices keep falling, at some point it's not profitable to pull it out of the ground. But we're not there yet, according to an analysis of production costs by an energy consulting firm. In fact, even if the Brent price index falls another 20 percent from Friday's closing price—to $40 a barrel—just 1.6 percent of the world's oil supply would represent unprofitable production.

Oil production costs: When and where the price of crude is making it unprofitable

"In the oil fields, they are starting to pull back pretty heavily," McDaniel said. "They are literally taking tanks and laying them down on their sides." As a result, she explained, "we have a number of big orders that are temporarily on hold."

Spillover effect: Oil price crash bankrupting 'small oil'

Goldman Sachs said U.S. oil prices need to trade near $40/bbl in the first half of this year to curb shale investments as it gave up on OPEC cutting output to balance the market.

Goldman sees need for $40/bbl oil as OPEC cut forecast abandoned

Wood Mackenzie' s analysts have mined its global database of 2,222 oil producing fields, which account for total liquids production of 75 MMbpd and determined at three oil price points, the impact on oil production and percentage of global supply which will turn cash negative: - At $50/bbl Brent, only 190,000 bpd of oil production is cash negative, representing 0.2% of global supply. Seventeen countries supply oil that is cash negative at $50, with the main contributors being the UK and the U.S. - At $45, 400,000 bpd is cash negative, or 0.4% of global supply. Half of this production is from conventional onshore production in the U.S. - At $40, 1.5 million bpd is cash negative, or 1.6% of global supply. At this point, the biggest contribution is from several oil sands projects in Canada. Tight oil production only starts to become cash negative as the Brent oil price falls into the high $30’s. Plummer further explains, "Being cash negative simply means that the production is more costly than the price received. This does not necessarily mean that production will be halted. The first response is usually to store oil produced in the hope that the oil can be sold when the price recovers.

Brent at $40/bbl could render 1.6% of global supply uneconomic, Wood Mackenzie says

Undeterred by the collapse in crude prices, Exxon Mobil Corp. is pushing ahead with plans to spend as much as a C$25 billion ($21 billion) on a project to export LNG from Canada. The company, along with Canadian affiliate Imperial Oil Ltd., is seeking to build a facility on the Pacific Coast that would initially liquefy and export 15 million metric tons of LNG a year, according to an environmental review application submitted last week to the British Columbia provincial government.

Exxon advances application for $21 billion Canadian LNG project