Sunday, 19 July 2026

Halliburton has secured integrated drilling and completions contracts for the GranMorgu deepwater project offshore Suriname, a development operated by TotalEnergies, according to Offshore Engineer OEDigital.

Block 58, where the field sits, is run by TotalEnergies with a 50% stake, with APA Corporation holding the remainder, according to OEDigital. TotalEnergies sanctioned the GranMorgu development in October 2024.

The fields lie 150 km off Suriname's coast, with recoverable reserves put at more than 750 million barrels, according to OEDigital. GranMorgu will bring the Sapakara and Krabdagu oil discoveries into production, following an exploration and appraisal campaign completed in 2023.

Halliburton said the award sets up what it described as its first global alliance with TotalEnergies and Noble.

Before the contract work began, Halliburton upgraded its liquid mud and cement plant using local suppliers and backed the build of Suriname's first drilling and completions workshop equipped for maintenance and repair, according to OEDigital.

Saudi Arabia swung to a current account surplus in the first quarter of 2026, its first in nearly two years, as oil revenues rose and imports fell, according to Semafor Net Zero.

The swing came from two directions at once: crude sales brought in more money, while a drop in imported goods reaching the kingdom shrank the outflow side of the ledger.

The economy has absorbed the strains of the Iran war, wrote Tim Callen, former IMF mission chief to the kingdom, in a piece for the Washington-based Arab Gulf States Institute. Callen credited a decades-old oil pipeline to the Red Sea and disciplined fiscal management.

That pipeline mattered for sales during the conflict. Aramco's East-West pipeline, together with its storage assets held in various countries, let the company capture higher crude prices while the war ran, according to Semafor Net Zero.

Looking past the quarter, Callen wrote that Saudi policymakers are expected to keep building resilience through new pipelines and upgrades to air, rail, sea, and road links.

Norway's Safe union and employers agreed to end a labour dispute in the oil service industry that had disrupted offshore drilling and cut the country's petroleum production, according to industry group Offshore Norway.

The two sides will now submit to voluntary arbitration, Offshore Norway said.

The Safe union launched its strike on June 15 after wage talks broke down, according to Offshore Norway. Employers responded by announcing a lockout from June 27 that affected close to 2,000 employees.

By July 9, the dispute had cut Norway's petroleum output by a cumulative 2.4 million barrels of oil equivalent, Offshore Norway said. The group described that loss as equal to more than half a day's total production.

Offshore Norway had warned that if the dispute continued, it could reduce output by about 120,000 boed by mid-July, up from an initial impact of around 12,000 boed.

The dispute affected oil service companies including SLB, Halliburton, Subsea 7, DOF Subsea, Weatherford, DeepOcean and Baker Hughes, according to Offshore Norway.

Norway is Europe's largest supplier of pipeline gas and produced more than 4 million barrels of oil equivalent per day in 2025.

U.S. prosecutors allege in an indictment unsealed earlier this year that a public affairs firm working on behalf of an oil giant matching Exxon's description hired Israeli private investigator Amit Forlit to execute a project that involved hacking climate activists, according to Grist.

Forlit faces hacking and wire fraud charges that could result in up to 45 years in prison, Grist reported. The U.S. government issued an arrest warrant and attempted to extradite him from the United Kingdom.

In court documents, Forlit alleged that the hacking was commissioned by DCI Group, a public affairs firm with a longtime relationship with Exxon, according to Grist. Reuters reported that the FBI had investigated DCI Group regarding the hacking operation.

DCI Group partner Craig Stevens said his firm has been told by the government that neither DCI nor any of its personnel are under investigation, according to Grist. Stevens said the firm had no knowledge of the alleged hacking activity.

Exxon has stated it has not been involved in or aware of any hacking activities and would condemn any such activity, Grist reported.

Exxon quoted the hacked meeting agenda in court filings to argue that activists were conspiring against the company as it faced subpoenas and lawsuits from 17 attorneys general, according to Grist.

Those investigations followed media reports that Exxon's own scientists determined as early as 1982 that the extraction and burning of fossil fuels caused climate change, according to Grist. The company went on to fund climate denial campaigns.

Texas upstream oil and gas employment has risen by 40,500 jobs since the pandemic-era low point in September 2020, a gain of nearly 26 percent, according to TXOGA.

Bureau of Labor Statistics data showed June figures ranging from a low of 111,900 in June 2021 to a high of 169,900 in June 2016.

The Dangote Refinery in Lagos has moved to price its products in Nigeria in US dollars, according to Semafor Net Zero.

The shift reverses an earlier arrangement. The refinery agreed in 2024 to set depot prices in the local currency after a government deal to source crude oil domestically, which the plant would purchase in naira, Semafor Net Zero reported.

The refinery is planning an initial public offering later this year, and the move to dollar pricing for local sales aims to shield it from foreign exchange risks, according to Semafor Net Zero.

The pricing change lands against a backdrop of pressure on fuel costs. President Bola Tinubu removed a fuel subsidy in 2023, driving higher fuel prices and a cost of living crisis, Semafor Net Zero reported.

South Africa is planning its biggest buildup of strategic oil reserves since the apartheid era to shield its economy from global energy shocks, according to Semafor Net Zero.

Draft fuel security rules would require state and private fuel companies to hold a combined buffer of up to 81 days of national consumption, Semafor Net Zero reported.

The plan would revive a storage network originally built in the 1970s to protect against international sanctions, according to Semafor Net Zero.

South Africa closed its two major refineries in 2022 after new fuel regulations undermined their commercial logic, Semafor Net Zero reported. The draft proposal cites the closure of those domestic refineries as compounding the country's fuel vulnerability, stating that "this vulnerability is compounded by the closure of domestic refineries."

Nigeria's Aliko Dangote has announced plans to expand his refining business to East Africa, according to Semafor Net Zero.

Asian refiners bought at least 11 million barrels of US crude in deals struck late on Tuesday, according to traders cited by Rigzone. More deals may follow, the traders said.

The buyers included refiners in South Korea, Japan and Thailand, according to Rigzone. Some of the cargoes may load as soon as this month, the traders said.

Rigzone reported that the surge in Asian purchases was driven by escalating hostilities between Washington and Tehran and a virtual standstill in observable traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.

Attacks on ships have increased in recent days, according to Rigzone, while Washington has reimposed a blockade of Iranian ports.

As of Wednesday, there was only a trickle of observable traffic going through Hormuz, Rigzone reported. Iran has been moving crude tankers out of the gulf with their transponders turned off, according to the report.

Environmental and climate campaigners want Kenya's government to abandon a proposed 700,000-barrel-per-day oil refinery backed by Aliko Dangote, Climate Home News reported.

The plant is slated for Lamu County on Kenya's northern coast and is billed by Climate Home News as East Africa's largest refining project, with construction expected to run up to three years. The refinery would supply refined products to Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and other regional markets.

Mohamed Adow, director of Power Shift Africa, described the approval as "an extraordinary act of environmental recklessness and economic short-sightedness".

Sherelee Odayar, oil and gas campaigner at Greenpeace Africa, cautioned that a plant of this size could raise the risk of habitat destruction, marine pollution, oil spills and air pollution in one of East Africa's most fragile coastal ecosystems, according to Climate Home News.

Kenya rolled out a National Electric Mobility Policy earlier this year to accelerate electric-vehicle adoption and trim a fuel import bill of roughly USD 5 billion a year, Climate Home News reported. Ethiopia has barred imports of non-electric vehicles and counts more than 100,000 EVs on its roads.

Dangote already runs a 650,000-barrel-per-day refinery in Lagos, currently Africa's largest, and plans to more than double its capacity to 1.4 million barrels, according to Climate Home News.

Workers at the Ichthys liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility have ratified a pay agreement, closing out a dispute that stopped production and export loadings, according to Offshore Engineer OEDigital.

Inpex Senior Vice President Corporate Bill Townsend confirmed the ballot result by email and said the company would file the deal with the Fair Work Commission for approval.

The walkout that shut production and LNG exports wound down in June once both sides settled on a provisional deal, which union members then voted through, Offshore Engineer OEDigital reported.

Unions blamed the June action for two condensate cargoes and one LNG cargo missing their scheduled loadings. They put the resulting hit to Inpex at roughly USD 200 million in lost earnings at the 9.3 million-metric-ton-per-year plant.

Inpex had sought to stop the industrial action, but the Fair Work Commission threw out that bid following a two-day hearing, per Offshore Engineer OEDigital.

Unions named Shell's Prelude floating LNG facility as the site they expect to become the next major bargaining flashpoint.

Gulf Marine Services (GMS) will deploy one of its self-elevating accommodation units on a four-year charter serving offshore work in Brazil, according to Offshore Engineer OEDigital.

The firm term runs to 1,461 days, according to Offshore Engineer OEDigital, which reported that the counterparty is an international offshore accommodation services provider.

Delivery to the charterer is scheduled in Rio de Janeiro within a window from August to November 2026, according to Offshore Engineer OEDigital.

GMS entered the Latin American market in May 2026, and this award followed that entry, according to Offshore Engineer OEDigital.

GMS Executive Chairman Mansour Al Alami said the four-year charter secures long-term utilization for one of the company's newest vessels, according to Offshore Engineer OEDigital. He tied the deal to what he described as demand for high-quality self-elevating units.