Oil settles below $68 per barrel

U.S. crude oil futures settled down $3.01 to $67.51 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange Friday after a report showed consumer sentiment in early August was weak. The released figures gave signals to traders that consumers will be tight on spending.

Oil CEOs among top ten paid executives

Seven of the top ten best paid chief executive officers in the United States last year belong to oil companies , according to research published by The Corporate Library group. CEOs on the list come from Occidental Petroleum, Hess, Ultra Petroleum, Chesapeake Energy, XTO Energy, EOG Resources and Nabors Industries. The top CEO was Blackstone Group's Stephen Schwarzman.

Senate's climate bill to give permits for free

The climate bill been written in the U.S. Senate will give away a substantial number of pollution permits worth billions of dollars for free to companies instead of selling them, a key Democratic senator was reported as saying, according to Reuters.

Energy