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If you read the news yesterday you would be forgiven for missing something momentous. When the definitive book about the oil age is finally written, yesterday will be marked as significant.

They came. They talked. They talked some more. They failed to reach a deal. And so the turmoil within the global oil industry continues.

For some time now scientists have been warning about the dangers of fracking and toxic chemicals and how they might include carcinogens, reproductive toxicants and what are known as endocrine disrupting chemicals or EDCs.

Eventually what goes down, must come up. And to the relief of everyone in the oil industry, the global energy watchdog, the International Energy Agency (IEA) believes that there are signs that oil prices "might have bottomed out.”

The leading Russian oil company, Rosneft, is currently under investigation by the Prosecutor’s Office on the Russian island of Sakhalin for a large oil spill which occurred last week.

Desperate times mean desperate measures. Something has to give. With no end in sight to the low oil price, Canadian tar sands companies are having to sell what are being described as their “jewels in the crown” in order just to survive.

Earlier this week, a little glimpse of hope for the oil industry concerning a respite in the oil price plunge all but vanished after it emerged that a “make or break” meeting over the weekend between key OPEC players had ended with no agreement on cutting production.

We’ve long known that the oil and gas industry was buying politicians. The latest expose from the New York Times confirms it once again, and this time it is frackers in the lead.