Wednesday, 29 July 2026

Crude prices dropped to their lowest level in a week on Tuesday as the US-Iran conflict entered an uneasy lull, according to Semafor Net Zero.

The pause is fragile. Semafor Net Zero reported that the US said it had thwarted an attempted surprise missile attack from Iran. The two sides also gave contradictory accounts of diplomacy: Washington said "good talks" were underway, while Tehran denied any talks were taking place at all.

Iran has attached a price to reopening shipping. Tehran proposed a temporary arrangement that would hand it greater control over transit routes, and warned it would keep Hormuz closed if Muscat rejected the plan, per Semafor Net Zero.

The closure has already rerouted physical barrels. Saudi Arabia has been forced to use alternative routes to move its crude, including the costlier Suez Canal detour, according to Semafor Net Zero. Longer voyages raise freight and delivery times on cargoes that would normally clear Hormuz directly, a cost that lands on shippers and buyers rather than on the flat price alone.

That split between a softening screen price and a still-disrupted supply chain defines the current market. Traders marked crude down on the absence of new strikes, even as the transit dispute stayed unresolved and Iran kept the closure threat on the table.

Kazakhstan has restarted crude oil shipments through the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) after the Black Sea terminal near Novorossiysk came back online following a shutdown of roughly a week, Oil & Gas Journal reported.

The terminal began taking crude from producers again and loading tankers on July 27, according to Oil & Gas Journal.

The outage followed Ukrainian drone strikes on tankers and terminal infrastructure between July 17 and July 20, the publication reported.

The export halt forced deep production cuts. Oil and condensate output fell from about 2 million b/d to roughly 1 million b/d at the low point of the shutdown, according to Oil & Gas Journal.

That exposure reflects how narrow Kazakhstan's export routing is. CPC handles more than 80% of the country's crude exports, per Oil & Gas Journal, leaving little alternative capacity when the Black Sea loading point stops.

Vista Energy SAB de CV has filed to bring its USD 5.8 billion Bandurria Norte shale oil development into Argentina's Large Investment Incentive Regime (RIGI), according to Oil & Gas Journal. The project targets peak output of 50,000 boe/d.

The acreage covers 26,500 acres in the oil window of Vaca Muerta and holds no producing wells at present, Oil & Gas Journal reported. Vista's development plan calls for drilling and completing 332 horizontal wells.

Surface work is on the same scale. The company intends to build a 40,000-b/d oil treatment plant, a gas compression plant, gathering systems, pipelines and associated infrastructure dedicated to the block, according to Oil & Gas Journal.

Bandurria Norte sits inside a wider volume ramp. Vista plans to lift production to 208,000 boe/d in 2028 and 250,000 boe/d in 2030, per Oil & Gas Journal. Against that trajectory, the new block's 50,000 boe/d peak is a material single-asset contribution.

Current output gives the baseline. Vista averaged 156,000 boe/d in the second quarter of 2026, up 16% from the preceding quarter and more than 30% higher than a year earlier, Oil & Gas Journal reported.

Evacuation capacity is the other half of the equation. The Vaca Muerta Oil Sur (VMOS) pipeline is designed for an initial 550,000 b/d and can be expanded to 700,000 b/d, with start-up scheduled for the first half of 2027, according to Oil & Gas Journal.

That timing matters for a greenfield block with no wells on production today. The 332-well program and the treatment plant would come online into a system whose main southern crude artery is not yet running.

RIGI inclusion is the pending variable. Vista has applied; approval has not been granted.

Allseas has been awarded a contract by Western LNG to install the subsea section of the Prince Rupert Gas Transmission (PRGT) pipeline serving the planned Ksi Lisims LNG export project in northwest Canada, according to Offshore Engineer OEDigital.

The scope covers roughly 50 kilometers of 36-inch and 48-inch concrete-weight coated pipeline, connecting the onshore transmission system to a planned floating LNG facility on Pearse Island, Offshore Engineer OEDigital reported.

That stretch is the last piece of the 700-kilometre PRGT system, which is set to move Canadian natural gas to the planned export terminal, according to the same report.

Work will be executed by the pipelay vessels Solitaire and Sandpiper, operating from the shoreline out to water depths of about 450 meters, Offshore Engineer OEDigital said.

Offshore installation is scheduled for 2029.