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Hungary’s MOL Group has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Libya’s National Oil Corporation (NOC) for cooperation in hydrocarbons exploration, technological innovation and crude trading, as international interest in Libya hots up

The strategic partnership agreement sets out the framework for NOC and MOL to exchange information and jointly explore potential areas of cooperation. These include hydrocarbon exploration and production, technological and field development innovations, oilfield services opportunities in Libya, crude supply and trading activities.

"We recognise Libya’s oil and gas industry as a pillar of strength and expertise. I am sure that this new agreement will act as a catalyst for further expanding our international portfolio, creating clear mutual value for both companies and reinforcing the resilience of our region. From the perspective of security of supply and energy sovereignty, particularly for landlocked countries, diversification of sources is of crucial importance. Our cooperation also goes beyond business, as we have agreed to rebuild our educational, scientific, and university ties in order to learn as much as possible from each other. Such partnerships can also help Europe to find its own path to competitiveness, rather than switching between different forms of energy dependency,” – said Zsolt Hernádi, chairman and CEO of the MOL Group.

The agreement comes as MOL is looking to expand its international portfolio to maintain its strategy target of at least 90,000 barrels of oil equivalent/day production level over the next five years, recently signing cooperation agreements with the national oil company of Kazakhstan (KazMunayGas), the national oil company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR), and the national oil company of Türkiye (Turkish Petroleum). The company has oil and gas exploration and production assets in nine countries, with production in eight countries: in Croatia, Azerbaijan, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Russia, Pakistan, Egypt, and Hungary.

The agreement also reflects the hotting up of international interest in Libya. Chevron recently signed an MoU with NOC to evaluate exploration and development opportunities, while TotalEnergies has signed an agreement extending the Libya Waha Concessions up to 2050, paving the way for further investments. TGS has a global provider of energy data and intelligence, has just signed a Letter of Intent (LOI) with North Africa Geophysical Company, (NAGECO),a subsidiary of the NOC to advance high-quality subsurface data, supporting Libya’s upstream development through modern, fit-for-purpose data and technology solutions. Libya’s latest upstream licensing round launched in March 2025, the first in 18 years, has attracted more than 40 bids, signalling growing international interest in Libya’s largely untapped hydrocarbon potential.

The global LNG shipping industry will require over 650 new LNG carriers by 2040, with significant new LNG supply set to come onstream, according to analysis by Wood Mackenzie

The Global LNG shipping outlook: form an ordering queue analysis examined recent LNG trade and shipping dynamics and the long-term requirement for newbuild LNG carriers.

Shipping capacity gap

New build investment was limited in 2025, according to the report findings. While strong deliveries are expected this year, the market outlook shifts from 2027 onwards. New large-scale LNG supply coming onstream this decade, supported by a record year of LNG supply final investment decisions in 2025, will drive demand for shipping capacity. Much of the new capacity is in the US, where LNG trades on a Free On Board basis. This will increase the proportion of LNG cargoes that react to fluctuations in global gas prices.

The result will be less direct LNG trade patterns, creating a more inefficient market that requires additional shipping capacity. More than 650 new LNG carriers (174,000m3 equivalent) are required by 2040 based on Wood Mackenzie trade and scrapping forecasts.

Build times are a complicating factor, with LNG carriers taking around 2.5-3 years to build at the moment, according to Fraser Carson, principal analyst, Global LNG Assets at Wood Mackenzie. "If players have already contracted LNG offtake to start before the end of the decade, the decision around placing a newbuild order needs to be made now."

Regulatory and fleet dynamics

Another factor accelerating fleet turnover are new maritime emissions regulations . The European Commission brought maritime CO2 emissions into its Emissions Trading System in stages between 2021 and 2024, making older, less efficient vessels increasingly uneconomic to operate globally. Average scrapping age has dropped from around 40 years historically to 26 years. Wood Mackenzie forecasts 73 vessels scrapped over the next five years, compared with 55 over the previous 11.

Carson said, "Vessels are exiting the LNG fleet more quickly and earlier than ever before, and the capacity lost will need to be replaced. We expect to see an upturn in ordering activity during 2026."

As the Uganda National Oil Company aims to build a crude refinery, it has reached out to a unit of global commodities trader, Vitol, for a US$2bn loan to support the project alongside construction and infrastructure developments

According to Henry Musasizi, Uganda's junior finance minister, this seven-year tenor loan from Vitol Bahrain EC (VBA) comes with an interest rate of 4.92%. The minister worked on advancing the approval process for the credit line and the loan, which involved significant lawmakers, who sanctioned the development with a majority verdict.

Musasizi said that Vitol's support "presents an opportunity to access non-traditional financing to implement. ..projects and support the government in developing national infrastructure."  

Vitol Bahrain EC has a long-standing presence in Uganda's downstream sector, functioning as the sole supplier of refined petroleum products to UNOC, before the state-owned company sells it to retailers across the country.

Alongside the refinery, the loan amount will also be covering road construction, a petroleum products storage terminal and extension of a petroleum pipeline from western Kenya to Uganda's capital Kampala.

Previously, the UNOC also concluded a deal with the UAE-based Alpha MBM Investments, whereby a domestic refinery with a capacity of 60,000 barrels per day is in the pipeline. The agreement accords 60% stake on the refinery to the UAE firm while UNOC retains 40%.

Uganda is looking to begin commercial oil generation starting next year from fields in its west.

Across the Middle East, oil and gas operators are acquiring larger, denser and more complex seismic datasets to unlock increasingly subtle geological targets

But as data volumes grow into the hundreds of billions of traces, the real challenge is no longer just acquisition. It is how quickly and confidently those datasets can be turned into actionable insight.

When growing data volumes are coupled with modern processing and imaging algorithms, such as elastic multi-parameter full waveform inversion, and the continued rise of artificial intelligence (AI) based workflows, the result is that high performance computing (HPC) systems are being pushed harder than ever. This of course intensifies demands on power, cooling and scalability. For energy giants, a key challenge is ensuring their HPC infrastructure remains fit-for-purpose to keep pace with modern geoscience.

Global technology company DUG is known for its state-of-the-art software and its network of some of the largest supercomputers on Earth. Against a constantly evolving hardware landscape, the Australian-born company is keeping its edge with the deployment of 82 new NVIDIA H200 machines, adding 41 petaflops of compute power to its global data-centre capacity. Each machine delivers an order-of-magnitude performance uplift over DUG’s fastest CPU-only hardware, further reducing the company’s turnaround times across both testing and production workflows.

The operational realities of a modern HPC facility also present significant opportunities for reducing both cost and environmental footprint. One way that DUG has maximised the energy efficiency of its HPC ecosystem is through the use of immersion cooling – where servers are submerged directly into a fluid that removes heat far more effectively than air. The technology supports significantly higher compute density, reduces power consumption and creates a stable environment without hot spots, dust or oxidation. Immersion allows operation at higher temperatures compared to air-cooling, thereby also reducing reliance on evaporative cooling, allowing hybrid or dry-cooling configurations that lower water use. This ultimately makes efficiency and sustainability part of the same design.

“Our data-centre upgrade significantly increases our total compute power,” said Harry McHugh, chief information officer at DUG. “This translates to even faster delivery of huge datasets and more computationally intensive workloads, from AI-inference applications, to advanced seismic processing and imaging workflows, including our revolutionary DUG Elastic MP-FWI Imaging technology”,

“Designing and operating at this scale gives us intimate knowledge of what modern HPC demands in practice – and this expertise drives the solutions we build and operate for our clients.”

With its new Abu Dhabi office supporting large-scale projects across the region, and a technology stack built around energy-efficient HPC and advanced imaging algorithms, DUG is primed to power the next wave of discovery in the Middle East, delivering faster, clearer and more reliable subsurface insights.

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The fossil-fuel sector offers the largest and most cost-effective opportunity for rapid methane abatement, according to the newly released Global Methane Status Report, launched on the sidelines of COP30 in Belém

Produced by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC), the Global Methane Status Report assesses progress and remaining gaps in efforts to cut methane - a potent greenhouse gas responsible for nearly a third of current warming.

The report shows that although methane emissions are still rising, projected 2030 emissions under current legislation are already lower than earlier forecasts due to a mix of national policies, sectoral regulations, and market shifts. However, the report warns that only full-scale implementation of proven and available control measures will close the gap to the Global Methane Pledge’s target of a 30% cut from 2020 levels by 2030.

Urging decisive methane action to deliver the Global Methane Pledge, ministers attending the Global Methane Pledge Ministerial stressed that the policies, technologies, and partnerships needed to meet the target are available, but require rapid scale-up across the energy, agriculture, and waste sectors. Ministers also called for increased transparency from countries on ambition and action to track progress.

Julie Dabrusin, Canada’s Minister of Environment and Climate Change and Co-Convener of the Global Methane Pledge, said, “This report is a crucial assessment of our progress and a key indicator of the work that’s required to meet the Global Methane Pledge goal. In just four years, we have made improvements, but we must continue to drive faster, deeper methane cuts. Every tonne reduced brings us closer to cleaner air, more resilient communities, and a thriving global economy. It is important for all countries that have agreed to the Global Methane Pledge to continue to work closely together to drive momentum on methane mitigation, turning ambition into tangible benefits for the planet.”

The fossil-fuel sector is the second largest source of anthropogenic methane emissions, responsible for approximately one third of the global total. Under current legislation, emissions from the sector are expected to rise by 8% in 2050 compared to 2020. This sector presents the single greatest potential for rapid, cost-effective methane abatement, according to the report. These reductions could be achieved through readily available technologies and practices, often at low cost.

Since the launch of the GMP, methane abatement policies in the oil and gas sector have become more innovative and widespread, while voluntary initiatives such as the Oil and Gas Methane Partnership (OGMP) 2.0 now cover up to 45% of global oil and gas production.

The rate of policy development and country participation, however, still fall short of what is needed to achieve the 2030 targets. Implementation and enforcement must also be strengthened.

The recent adoption of novel approaches, such as the European Union import standard, offers the potential to use the market to mitigate methane in oil and gas sector more rapidly at the global scale.

Bridging the methane policy gap in the fossil fuel sector calls for strong implementation of existing policies, continuous capacity building, increased ambition from additional producing countries, ramped up technical support and innovative financial mechanisms to facilitate mitigation in developing countries.

Key measures recommended include:

• enhancing monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) systems across all fossil fuel operations
• expanding the use of direct measurement protocols and corroborated satellite data which could improve the accuracy and transparency of inventories
• expanding leak detection and repair (LDAR) programmes in oil and gas, which not only help reduce leaks but also enhance data quality for inventories and enhance workplace safety and asset integrity;
• ensuring proper sealing techniques during well closure, given methane emissions from abandoned wells can continue for decades after activities cease;
• strengthening enforcement mechanisms with the establishment of clear accountability structures, penalties for non-compliance and independent oversight;
• facilitating access to finance and capacity building;
• harnessing import standards as market leverage, creating a clear incentive for producing countries to adopt stronger mitigation practices; and
• leveraging international and bilateral frameworks for capacity and alignment.