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TotalEnergies has signed an agreement extending the Libya Waha Concessions up to December 31, 2050, paving the way for further investments and strengthening TotalEnergies’ presence in the country

The Waha concessions are held by NOC (59.16%), TotalEnergies (20.42%) and ConocoPhillips (20.42%) and are operated by Waha Oil Company (WOC), a company 100% owned by NOC.

This agreement sets new fiscal terms allowing to increase the production of these concessions, currently producing around 370,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boe/d). It clears the way for a new phase of investments, including the development of the North Gialo field, which is expected to add 100,000 boe/d of production.

“As we celebrate 70 years of presence in Libya, we are pleased to sign this agreement, and I would like to thank the Libyan authorities for their continued support, in particular Dr. Khalifa Rajab Abdulsadek, Minister of Oil and Gas of Libya and Masoud Suleman, chairman of the National Oil Corporation (NOC),” said Patrick Pouyanné, chairman and chief executive officer of TotalEnergies.

“TotalEnergies reaffirms its long-standing commitment to working alongside its partners to increase Waha’s production, starting with the development of the North Gialo field. Extending the Waha concession, with its low cost and low emission giant resources offering many opportunities to grow production, fits perfectly with our strategy.”

TotalEnergies has been present in Libya since 1956. In 2025, the company’s production in the country averaged 113,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, from the offshore Al Jurf field (TotalEnergies 37.5%), the onshore El Sharara area (TotalEnergies 15% in former Block NC 115 and 12% in former Block NC 186), and the onshore Waha concessions (TotalEnergies 20.42%).

The agreement was signed during the Libya Energy & Economy Summit in Tripoli, where NOC chairman Engineer Masoud Suleman emphasised the substantial progress Libya has made in oil and gas production. He pointed out that this advancement occurred despite the ongoing challenges, particularly global price volatility. According to NOC figures, Libya recorded the highest average production rate in 2025 in comparison to the last decade, at 1.374mn bpd, with total crude oil production for the year reaching 501mn barrels.

Eng. Suleman noted that the NOC’s strategy targets an initial production increase to 1.6mn bpd, with a subsequent goal of reaching 2 million barrels per day in the medium term.

Majors have shown increased interest in Libya, with TotalEnergies amongst those actively pursuing exploration and production opportunities. 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.

Global energy consultancy company Penspen scooped US$500mn in new contract awards in 2025, up 120% on 2024, underpinned by growth in its core Middle East market

The achievement reflects a year of strong global performance across engineering, project management consultancy (PMC) and asset integrity services, the company says.

In the Middle East and Africa, Penspen was awarded 65 new contracts worth US$456mn, spanning project management supervision and consultancy services, FEED, detailed design and integrity assessment. The UAE remained its largest and most strategic country of operation, supported by deep engagements across the ADNOC Group, where Penspen is one of the ADNOC Groups top-20 energy sector contractors operating in the UAE.

During the year, Penspen secured and executed a number of high-value PMC assignments supporting critical gas infrastructure, including LNG pre-conditioning, compression facilities, utilities and production enhancement programmes, alongside multiple offshore and onshore PMC packages.

In Saudi Arabia, Penspen concluded 12 new agreements spanning studies, FEED, detailed design and project management supervision services. It continued to build momentum through its selection under a framework with ENOWA, executed through a joint venture with Dar Al Handasah and in collaboration with Technip, positioning Penspen at the heart of NEOM’s next-generation energy and water infrastructure.

Neale Carter, executive vice president, Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific Regions, said, “ The Middle East played a pivotal role in Penspen’s 2025 growth, contributing the largest share of new contract awards and reinforcing the region’s role as a strategic engine for the business.

“Our long-standing relationships across the UAE and Saudi Arabia, combined with our ability to deliver complex gas, LNG infrastructure and PMC programmes at scale, continue to differentiate Penspen in a highly competitive market. With sustained investment across gas, energy security, aviation, and transition-linked infrastructure, we see significant opportunity to build on this momentum in the years ahead.”

In addition to the Middle East and Africa, Penspen also saw strong growth in Europe and the Americas, supported by major infrastructure and energy transition programmes.

In the UK and Europe the company won 177 new contracts worth US$16mn, including fuelling terminal operations, pipeline maintenance and inspection, hydrogen repurposing and blending, carbon capture studies, gas compression upgrades and pipeline diversions

While in the Americas it secured 54 new contracts worth US$5mn, including pipeline fitness-for-service, electrical interference and cathodic protection studies, gas pipeline project management, production operations support and environmental testing.

Chief executive officer, Peter O’Sullivan, said, “With cumulative contract awards of US$500mn, 2025 stands out as one of the strongest commercial and delivery years in Penspen’s history.

“While we continued to build momentum across Europe and the Americas – particularly in energy transition – our performance was anchored by exceptional delivery in core markets where demand for large-scale, complex energy infrastructure remains strong.”

Aramco, Honeywell and King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) are collaborating to scale up the development of Crude-to-Chemicals (CTC) technology in a bid to maximise the value of crude oil and reduce costs associated with CTC conversion 

The new CTC pathway will entail converting crude oil directly into light olefins and other high-demand chemicals, resulting in improved fuel efficiency, carbon utilisation, and process economics—allowing for more efficient and cost-effective production at scale.

The collaboration aligns with Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 by helping to advance economic diversification, build national research and technology capabilities, and strengthen the Kingdom’s position in the global chemicals market, combining academia and industry expertise to accelerate technology development and national capabilities.

Dr. Ali A. Al-Meshari, Aramco senior vice president of technology oversight & coordination, said, “This collaboration with Honeywell UOP and KAUST furthers Aramco's efforts to drive innovation and shape the future of petrochemicals. By harnessing the power of cutting-edge technologies, we aim to enhance energy efficiency and unlock increased value from every barrel of crude. This novel Crude-to-Chemicals process is aligned with our vision of supporting the global transition towards cleaner, high-performance chemical production. Moreover, this initiative demonstrates our focus on contributing to the growth of a vibrant ecosystem, where the deployment of innovative technologies can create lasting value for our stakeholders, our communities, and the environment.”

Rajesh Gattupalli, Honeywell UOP president, added, “This agreement marks a defining moment in our strategic collaboration with Aramco and KAUST – and in the global evolution of Crude-to-Chemicals technology. With Honeywell UOP’s deep expertise in catalytic process design and commercial scale-up, we’re well positioned to drive this innovation forward.”

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.

Despite advances in digital technology, many oil and gas sites across the Middle East still rely on manual entry for tank and vessel inspections, resulting in days of downtime, high scaffolding costs and risk to human life

What if you could change all that with drone technology?

Inspections drones such as the Elios 3 are revolutionising the world of confined space inspections, improving safety, reducing downtime and enhancing operational efficiency.

Join us for an exclusive live webinar hosted by Flyability in association with Oil Review Middle East on ‘Transforming oil and gas operations with the Elios 3 drone’ on Tuesday 2 September at 2pm GST. Industrial experts will explain how drones such as the Elios 3 are transforming confined space inspections, and how you can integrate this technology into your operations seamlessly.

Key highlights:

Drone integration: learn how to safety and effectively implement drones in confined space
Safety and training: understand essential safety protocols and training strategies for your team
ROI: discover how to measure and achieve a strong return on investment with drone technology
Real world use cases: hear from the engineers using drone tech in the field on the impact Elios 3 is having on in oil and gas inspections.

Speakers and host:

Fabio Fata – senior sales manager, Flyability (moderator)
Eralp Koltuk – inspection lead engineer, Tüpraş
Danijel Jovanovic – director of operations, ZainTECH

Take your operations to the next level! Don’t miss out on gaining valuable insights into how drones can make inspections safer, faster and smarter .

From making inspections in hazardous confined spaces much safer to streamlining the whole process and providing valuable real-time data, you will get to see exactly how the Elios 3 is changing the game.

Coinciding with COP30, significant progress has been reported in driving forward the aims of the Oil & Gas Decarbonization Charter (OGDC) launched at COP28

The Oil & Gas Decarbonization Charter (OGDC), a global coalition of leading energy companies championed by the CEOs of ADNOC, Aramco, and TotalEnergies and supported by the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI), highlights expanded reporting coverage, strengthened action plans for emissions reduction and enhanced collaboration to accelerate industry decarbonisation in its 2025 Status Report: Implementing Action.

The Charter now brings together 55 signatories operating across more than 100 countries, representing around 40% of global oil production. Signatories invested approximately US$32bn in low-carbon solutions including renewables, carbon capture, hydrogen and low-carbon fuels in 2024.

This year, for the first time, the companies shared emissions data based on the OGCI Reporting Framework, laying the foundation for consistent reporting across 55 companies. 50 of the 55 signatories submitted data for this year’s report, covering 98% of OGDC operated production, most of which has received third-party assurance.

Forty-two signatories have now set interim Scope 1 and 2 emissions reductions ambitions for 2030, and 36 have developed corresponding action plans, reflecting tangible progress since the Charter’s 2024 Baseline Report, with six more companies sharing interim ambitions and seven more developing corresponding action plans on methane and flaring.

Extensive collaboration programme

An extensive collaboration programme is underway, with a focus on methane, flaring and reporting. TotalEnergies for example is sharing its AUSEA technology with several national oil companies to strengthen methane detection and measurement. Peer-to-peer exchanges, regional partnerships and technical workshops have strengthened capacities, while engagement with OGCI, the United Nations Environment Programme, the World Bank and many others, are helping scale practical solutions. At the company level, OGDC is helping to embed tailored, industry-specific training programmes.

Dr Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, managing director, Group CEO of ADNOC, COP28 president and OGDC CEO Champion, said, “Two years ago, at COP28 we came together to create the world’s first truly industry-wide coalition to decarbonise at scale. Together, we are turning the Charter’s words into action by delivering tangible progress, scaling innovation and reporting transparently against our shared commitments.”

Patrick Pouyanné, chairman and CEO of TotalEnergies and OGDC CEO Champion, added, “OGDC is about action and collective delivery. This year we moved from baseline to implementation, with almost all signatories reporting data that covers 98% of operated production and more companies setting 2030 targets backed by plans. This reflects that progress starts with what we measure and a shared reality that this is a journey where we advance faster together. Our focus now is clear. We must cut methane, end routine flaring and report progress consistently. We invite all IOCs and NOCs to join and show measurable results by the next COP.”

Bjørn Otto Sverdrup, head of the OGDC Secretariat, said, “With OGDC, we have established a platform for companies willing to take action and collaborate across North, South, East, West, to share best practices and accelerate decarbonisation – particularly towards reducing methane and zero flaring by 2030.”

“We are encouraged by the progress made, and we look forward to the work ahead.”

At COP30, TotalEnergies announced a US$100mn commitment to Climate Investments Venture Strategy funds, which supports technologies that cut emissions across the oil and gas value chain. Climate Investments (CI) is an OGDC Partner.