Algeria’s Sonatrach and Saudi oil and gas investor and operator Midad Energy North Africa have signed a USD 5.4-billion hydrocarbons production-sharing contract for the Illizi South perimeter, Sonatrach announced on Monday.
“The initial exploration well recorded the highest production rate from a vertical well in the Minagish formation in Kuwait’s history,” KOC said in a statement on Monday. The company has made similar announcements for oil and gas offshore discoveries since last year.
Of the total U.S. rig count of 547, 529 rigs are categorized as land rigs, 15 are categorized as offshore rigs, and three are categorized as inland water rigs. The total U.S. rig count is made up of 418 oil rigs, 120 gas rigs, and nine miscellaneous rigs, according to Baker Hughes’ count, which revealed that the U.S. total comprises 480 horizontal rigs, 55 directional rigs, and 12 vertical rigs.
Valeura Energy Inc has completed a 10-well infill drilling campaign at the Nong Yao oilfield in the Gulf of Thailand, increasing the company’s net production before royalties to 24,800 barrels per day (bpd) in the last seven days of the third quarter.
The Saudi company, through its Netherlands-based subsidiary Midad Energy North Africa BV, agreed to shoulder the full exploration and development cost. That is expected to be $5.4 billion, including $288 million for exploration, Sonatrach said in a statement on its website.
The contract is expected to begin in the second quarter of 2026 and run for about 350 days, with a total estimated value of $140 million, including a mobilization fee. The agreement also provides options for three additional wells.
Carnelian Energy Capital Management, L.P. has closed its Canada-focused Carnelian Acquisition and Development fund (CAD) at the hard cap of $600 million in limited partner commitments. The single-closing fund was oversubscribed, reflecting continued investor interest in upstream opportunities north of the border.
Murtaza Jariwala, CEO and managing director of Vanguard Engineering & Oilfield Services, talks to The Energy Year about the new opportunities that tariff changes have created for the company and local manufacturing in Oman. Vanguard is an Omani provider of engineering and oilfield services to the oil and gas, petrochemical and industrial sectors.
H.E. Jamal Essa Al Loughani, Secretary-General of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC), talks to The Energy Year about energy security, diversification of petrochemicals output and trade flows and the organisation’s growing emphasis on sustainable technologies. OAPEC is the Kuwait-based intergovernmental organisation that co-ordinates energy policy among Arab oil-producing countries.
The shift concerns, first, the fact that alternative energy sources have added to rather than replaced oil and gas, and second, that “every major forecaster is revising scenarios, with oil and gas locked in for decades”, Nasser said, saying he hoped the outlook for long-term oil and gas investment had changed for the better.