Shell’s sprawling but secretive in-house trading business is often one of its biggest profit boosters, and Chief Executive Officer Wael Sawan said in March that its traders haven’t lost money in a single quarter over the past decade. Yet recent price swings have been hard to navigate, with crude whipsawed by US President Donald Trump’s trade war, OPEC+ policy and Israel’s attacks on Iran.
The Ministry, together with the Petroleum Commission and GNPC, will provide regulatory oversight and support to ensure the development process is efficient and aligned with national interests. Further technical and commercial evaluations are expected to help shape a mutually beneficial development framework for the Eban-Akoma project.
Goldman Sachs, meanwhile, was quick to predict another oversized OPEC+ output hike in September, at 500,000 barrels daily. The bank issued the prediction on Sunday, saying “Saturday’s announcement to accelerate supply hikes increases our confidence that the shift, which we started flagging last summer, to a more long-run equilibrium focused on normalizing spare capacity and market share, supporting internal cohesion, and strategically disciplining US shale supply, is continuing.”
While official statements treat each case in isolation, the sheer number and pattern demand attention. Kremlin critics and Western analysts are urging transparent, independent investigations. But in Putin’s Russia, that’s highly unlikely.
Europe has accelerated its purchases of liquefied natural gas to refill its storage caverns for the winter, and once again, this has driven prices higher, sapping demand in Asia. This could turn into a seasonal pattern until new LNG capacity comes online—and it will definitely add to Europe’s energy cost woes.
Oil markets kicked off the new year in a downbeat mood, with Wall Street analysts almost unanimously predicting a huge oversupply in 2025 even if OPEC+ did not add a single barrel back into the market. Well, it’s six months on, and oil markets have continued to defy these bearish expectations.
Velesto Drilling has secured a contract from PTTEP to deploy its NAGA 5 jackup rig for a 15-well campaign starting in June 2025 in Malaysian waters, the company said on Monday.
Chevron Corp. and TotalEnergies SE are competing in Libya’s first energy exploration tender since the 2011 conflict, the country’s state-run oil firm said, as the OPEC member looks to oil majors to help ramp up production to a record.
Mozambican President Daniel Chapo said his government and private companies will have to collectively ensure the necessary security is in place to enable TotalEnergies to restart construction of a $20 billion gas project that has stalled due to a militant insurgency — and even then risks will remain.
DNO ASA entered into an offtake agreement with France’s ENGIE SA for DNO’s Norwegian gas production and secured a related offtake financing facility with a major U.S. bank for up to $500 million.