There's no doubt these are tough times for oil prices and associated firms as stockpiled barrels tower up and prices fall off a cliff.
Dougie Youngson, analyst at finnCap, summed up the market plight with this tongue in cheek gem in the intro to his weekly round up.
"You know you’re unpopular when even pirates off the coast of Africa can’t be bothered to hijack oil tankers as it isn’t worth their while financially anymore."
Crude futures were down again today as uncertainty about production put a halt to any gains. Traders are also nervy about the US non-farms later, which may or may not give oil a boost or not.
Oil services is also under the cosh and the end of the week saw Petrofac (LON:PFC), the FTSE250 group, get downgraded by US house Citi to 'neutral'. Merrill Lynch has also downgraded oil explorer and producer Soco International (LON:SIA) to ‘neutral’ from ‘buy’.
But it's not all doom and gloom on the exploration front as 88Energy (LON:88E), the Alaska explorer, was one of the top gainers on Friday, adding almost 9% as project Icewine gains traction after new analysis showed its prize potential.
Elsewhere, news gaining traction in webworld was the suggestion an interest rate CUT maybe on the way in the UK - to bolster a flagging economy.
It comes after the important (to the UK) services sector suffered its worst month for nearly three year in the month just gone.
Back to companies and shares in Amur Minerals (LON:AMC) jumped 30% after it inked an outline agreement with the Russian government's Far East and Baikal Region Development Fund.
The “non-binding heads of terms” could expand the financing options for its flagship Kun-Manie nickel sulphide project in the east of the country.
Another resource firm doing well was SolGold (LON:SOLG), which shot up over 14% in early deals as it revealed drillig at the Cascabel copper project in Ecuador continues to hit intense porphyry style mineralisation.