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Bryan Mullennix/Getty Images A stack of colorful oil barrels in Portland, Oregon.

Oil supplies in Iraq and Russia surged to the highest level in decades, signaling no respite in early 2015 from the glut that has pushed crude prices to their lowest in five years.

Russian oil production rose 0.3 percent in December to a post-Soviet record of 10.667 million barrels a day, according to preliminary data e-mailed today by CDU-TEK, part of the Energy Ministry. Iraq exported 2.94 million barrels a day in December, the most since the 1980s, said Oil Ministry spokesman Asim Jihad. The countries provided 15 percent of the worlds oil in November, according to the International Energy Agency.

Oil slumped 48 percent in London in 2014, the steepest decline since the 2008 financial crisis, as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries refused to pare output in response to the highest U.S. oil production in three decades. Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak, who met with some OPEC members in November, said the nation will maintain output this year and expects prices to stabilize.

With the latest news from Russia and Iraq, the focus on rising supply remains a key negative driver for oil, Ole Sloth Hansen, an analyst at Saxo Bank A/S in Copenhagen, said by e- mail. Brent crude futures, at about $57 a barrel today, may slip below $50 this year, he said.

Russian output is increasing even after the U.S. and the European Union imposed sanctions last year in response to the countrys annexation of Crimea and what they say was support for separatists in eastern Ukraine. Measures included targeting the energy sector by banning exports to Russia of some equipment and technology. The countrys government gets about half of its revenue from oil and gas taxes.

Iraq Deal

Iraq, OPECs second-biggest producer, reached a deal with its semi-autonomous Kurdish region last month over the Kurds oil exports through Turkey, after years of disagreement on the territorys right to independently develop its energy resources.

The agreement looks to have had a positive effect on exports to the north, analysts at consultants JBC Energy GmbH in Vienna said in a report today.

The agreement allows the shipment of as much as 550,000 barrels a day of oil from northern Iraq to the port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean, along a pipeline to the Turkish border operated by the Kurdistan Regional Government. This includes 300,000 barrels a day from the Kirkuk oilfields in northern Iraq, under the control of Kurdish forces since they moved to repel an offensive by militants from the Islamic State in June.

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Russia, Iraq push oil supply as 2015 begins with glut

At left, a Peshmerga fighter examines the damage from ISIS artillery hitting close to their frontline position near Mosul Dam. At right, another proudly displays Kurdish flag. (FoxNews.com)

MOSUL, Iraq Under a gloomy late November sky that dumped cold rain on their frontline fighting position overlooking Mosul Dam, some 16 Peshmerga fighters mustered around a small hut the only visible means of protection from enemy fire while others hovered around a small campfire for warmth.

Just hours earlier, the road leading into the Kurdish army's base was hit by artillery from Islamic State or Daesh as it is known in the Middle East, forcing some closures. But the fighters were calm and collected sharing jokes and cigarettes ahead of another long and cold night protecting their cherished land in the northern part of this embattled land.

Now we know their key points and from where they try to attack us. Its weather like now the fog over them that allows them not to be seen by the planes, one high-ranking Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) official, who left an office job to fight on the frontlines with the Peshmerga, told FoxNews.com in reference to the war against the jihadist army. When it is raining, it is a good time for them to start attacking. At the beginning, the villages in Iraq were communicating and helping them attack, they shot at us front and back. But the villagers soon realized that these people were not good. They were not human.

The Peshmerga fighters don a mishmash of camouflage clothes, and wield whatever guns they can get their hands on. Their formal training is limited, and their best attributes are instinct and will.

We have principles. We were brought up on those principles and an innate drive to serve. We treat Kurdistan like our second mother, explains the official, who is a high-value target and thus asked to remain unnamed. If you do something day after day you learn and we learn how to fight very fast.

The Peshmerga whose name literally translates to those who face death began as something of a mountain militia in the 1920s when the push for Kurdish independence began. In recent decades, they faced unrelenting persecution from the Ba'ath loyalists of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. One Peshmerga fighter told FoxNews.com they dont suffer from psychological issues pertaining to combat because they have grown up around fighting and have developed an early understanding that it is just what we have to do. While the issue of possible PTSD garners little if any mainstream attention, one daughter of a retired Peshmerger fighter said at least in her experience growing up, she witnessed the mental anguishes of battle.

The Peshmerga soldiers range from around 18 to over 70 years old, with many coming out of retirement in the quest to defeat the ISIS threat. During days of intense conflict, the Peshmerga are lucky to return to their base for two or three hours of sleep and a quick bite to eat, before returning to their fighting locus. As it stands, a majority of fighters are not soldiers but what they call security advisors. They dont take a salary and have volunteered simply out of devotion.

- Kurdish military official

There is a Special Forces that has been arranged for these people that have come in, they dont register their names and dont sign contracts. They just want to serve Kurdistan, the official said.

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Iraq's Peshmerga desperate for US arms in fight against ISIS - ISIS fighter accidentally reveals his location in tweets

Libya terror suspect Anas al-Liby dies before US trial
An alleged al-Qaeda leader has died just days before going on trial in New York over the 1998 US embassy attacks in Africa. Abu Anas al-Liby, 50, died in hospital on Friday, his wife and lawyers...

By: NewsDroid

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Libya terror suspect Anas al-Liby dies before US trial - Video

Even as authorities in Cairo said they were investigating the abduction of seven Egyptian Christians in Libya, reports emerged Saturday of more than a dozen other such kidnappings carried out during the day by suspected Islamic militants.

Despite the intensifying dangers as Libya splinters into warring fiefdoms, many Egyptians continue to seek work in the neighboring North African nation, including large numbers of Coptic Christians from southern Egypt or the Nile Delta.

But as Islamic militants tighten their grip on some parts of Libya, Christians have been specifically singled out as targets. They include a Coptic couple and their daughter who were abducted and killed last month by unidentified gunmen who burst into their home in the city of Surt, 220 miles southeast of the capital, Tripoli.

The slayings sent shock waves through Egypts Coptic community, which will be observing Eastern rite Christmas in the coming week.

Saturdays reported kidnappings also took place in Surt, where Islamist militias hold sway. An eyewitness, Hanna Aziz, told the Associated Press that attackers forced their way into a residential building before dawn and systematically hunted down Christians, separating out Muslim workers also living in the facility. The screaming captives were handcuffed and dragged away, she said.

A Coptic priest in the town of Samalout in southern Egypt, where the kidnap victims were from, confirmed the abduction, the AP reported.

Egypt said it was already investigating the report of seven Copts being abducted days earlier in Surt. The victims were reportedly seized by gunmen at a checkpoint as they tried to flee the city.

As chaos has mounted in Libya in the wake of its 2011 uprising, Coptic Christians have found themselves in particular peril. In February, seven were shot dead execution-style in the eastern Libya city of Benghazi.

Egyptian authorities say it has been difficult to ensure the safety of Egyptian nationals because Libya has competing governments, one based in Tripoli and the other, which is internationally recognized, based in the eastern town of Tobruk, near the Egyptian border. Egypt -- whose ambassador himself was abducted last year -- no longer has an embassy in Tripoli.

The wave of attacks against Copts, indigenous Christians who make up about 10% of Egypts population, came as battling militias in Libya tried to gain an advantage in a fierce confrontation that has largely devolved into a stalemate.

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More than a dozen Egyptian Copts reportedly kidnapped in Libya

SIRTE, Libya, Jan. 3 (UPI) -- At least 13 Coptic Christians were kidnapped from their homes by masked gunmen in the Islamic militant-controlled city of Sirte in west Libya, according to witnesses.

Around 15 armed men in masks stormed a complex housing workers early Saturday, going room to room and forcing residents to show identification before separating Muslims from Christians, one witness said. The militants handcuffed and took into custody about 13 Coptic Christians, all reportedly men.

The abduction comes about a week after seven Egyptian Christians were taken in similar fashion from a fake checkpoint in Sirte.

Located in northwest Libya, Sirte has been a stronghold for Islamic militants since the fall of former President Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, when vying rebel factions began fighting each other for control of the North African nation.

An internationally-recognized government took charge in the country's east. Western Libya, recently plagued by widespread power outages, is occupied by religiously-conservative armed groups such as Ansar al-Shariah, blamed for the Sept. 2012 attack on a consulate in Benghazi that resulted in the death of four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens.

Eastern Libyan forces conducted airstrikes against militants of the Libya Dawn movement in Misrata Sunday after the group killed 19 troops in a Christmas Day attack on a power plant in Sirte.

A large Egyptian community, both Christian and Muslim, resides in Libya, where most work in construction.

The conflict between Libya's vying factions has appeared to represent a sort of proxy war between Turkey and Qatar favoring Islamic groups in the country's west and Egypt and the United Arab Emirates supporting the eastern government. UAE reportedly flew airstrikes out of Egyptian airbases against militants in west Libya in August.

2015 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Any reproduction, republication, redistribution and/or modification of any UPI content is expressly prohibited without UPI's prior written consent.

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Masked gunmen abduct Egyptian Christians in Libya