Mol Nyrt. and Gazprom Neft PJSC have agreed on the terms of a deal which will see the Hungarian company gain control of Serbia’s only oil refinery, paving the way for the lifting of US sanctions on the plant’s operator. Mol will buy Gazprom’s combined 56.2 percent interest in Naftna Industrija Srbije, which came under US sanctions in October due to its Russian majority ownership, the Budapest-based firm said in a statement on Monday. The deal, subject to the approval of the US Office of Foreign Assets Control and the Serbian government, may be completed by March 31, Mol said, without disclosing the purchase price.  Mol is in talks with Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. to enter NIS as a minority shareholder, Mol Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Zsolt Hernadi said in the statement. The United Arab Emirates has a long relationship with Serbia, with several government-linked entities having made investments in property, agriculture and other businesses in the Balkan state.  Serbia is also looking to raise its nearly 30 percent stake in NIS by 5 percentage points, Serbian Energy Minister Dubravka Djedovic Handanovic told reporters in Belgrade earlier on Monday. The deal is a win for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban ahead of elections in April where his party is trailing in polls. The premier leveraged his ties to the leaders of Russia, Serbia and the US to bring the deal to fruition, discussing the potential purchase in back-to-back meetings with the three presidents late last year. Removing Sanctions Hungary and Serbia will now ask the US to lift sanctions on NIS. They were imposed amid a raft of penalties on multiple Russian-controlled energy assets following Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The sanctions on NIS – announced a year ago but in effect since October – halted oil deliveries via the Adriatic pipeline

Tankers have begun discharging Venezuelan crude at Caribbean islands, publicly signaling their activity in a move that marks a new trade order after US exerted control over Caracas’ oil industry.  Two vessels delivered about 2.5 million barrels of Venezuela’s Merey crude to storage tanks on Saint Lucia and Curacao, staging posts for broader exports, over the weekend, according to ship-tracking data. In the coming days, others tankers are set to bring more of the nation’s oil to different destinations, including the Bahamas. The Trump administration tapped trading giants Trafigura Group and Vitol Group to help market Venezuelan crude, and is encouraging US majors to invest in the country to revive its battered oil industry. The shipping market is being shaken up by the intervention, with freight rates surging for some routes.  Some so-called dark fleet tankers laden with Venezuelan crude have turned on their transponders as they prepare to offload their oil, while ships that have stayed clear of the trade return to participate.  The Volans — an Aframax sanctioned by the US and UK — unloaded about 600,000 barrels at Curacao on Jan. 17, according to ship-tracking data. The discharge location is home to the Bullen Bay storage facility. The vessel was carrying a cargo for Vitol, Bloomberg reported last week. Separately, the Kelly, a very-large crude carrier, arrived at Castries on Saint Lucia on Jan. 18 to offload 1.9 million barrels of Merey, according to the data. The delivery is the first shipment of Venezuelan crude to the Caribbean island since Dec. 2018, according to Kpler and Vortexa. Castries is home to a storage facility that’s primarily operated by Houston-headquartered Buckeye Partners LP. The company didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment outside of working hours. Bloomberg News couldn’t identify the company or entity responsible for the oil trade. Meanwhile, VLCC Marbella reached South

Listen to the article 3 min This audio is auto-generated. Please let us know if you have feedback. Five Upper Midwestern utilities, led by Xcel Energy, have proposed expanding transmission between North Dakota and Minnesota to address thermal and voltage issues on an existing 345-kV line operating at capacity. The companies, which include Great River Energy, Minnesota Power, Missouri River Energy Services and Otter Tail Power, on Jan. 15 filed an application with the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission to add a second 345-kV transmission circuit to the existing line between Douglas County, Minnesota, and Cass County, North Dakota. The original transmission line was completed about a decade ago as part of the CapX2020 project. The companies said all new infrastructure would be added within the existing right-of-way. The five energy providers will jointly own the project, with Xcel acting as project manager and responsible for construction. The entire project is estimated to cost about $249 million, with roughly $187 million for work in Minnesota, according to the application.  Retrieved from Minnesota PUC. The utilities said they plan to file a similar application with North Dakota regulators. “We designed the original transmission line with the future in mind by building infrastructure that could be expanded when our customers and electric cooperative members needed it,” the energy providers said in a statement. “We will soon expand this important project without affecting any new landowners, limiting our overall impact while saving money for our customers and electric cooperative members throughout the region.” The new line “will facilitate efficient electricity transmission across multiple states to local communities, supporting each state’s policy and reliability objectives in a more cost-effective and minimally disruptive manner,” the utilities said in their application. “The project is needed to provide additional transmission capacity and to maintain electric system reliability throughout the

Murphy Oil Corp said Monday it had encountered noncommercial quantities of hydrocarbons in the first of its three-well exploration campaign offshore Côte d’Ivoire. “A key outcome at Civette is that we confirmed the presence of hydrocarbons in this frontier play – a meaningful success in early-stage exploration”, president and chief executive Eric Hambly said in an online statement. “While Civette did not meet commercial thresholds, the well provided insights that strengthen our subsurface understanding for the potential of the [Tano] basin and inform the remaining prospectivity on the CI-502 Block”. The Houston, Texas-based oil and gas explorer and developer had placed a gross resource potential of 440-1,000 million barrels of oil equivalent (MMboe) on Civette, according to Murphy Oil’s investor presentation on January 7, 2026. The Civette well is in Block CI-502. The company said Monday it would continue with the Bubale prospect in Block CI-709 and the Caracal prospect in CI-102, “both targeting independent plays with significant resource potential”. According to the investor presentation, the gross resource potential for Bubale and Caracal is 340-850 MMboe and 150-360 MMboe respectively. They are scheduled to be spudded this year. The three blocks are among five held by Murphy Oil in the West African country. The five, all in deep waters, are co-owned with Société Nationale d’Opérations Pétrolières de la Côte d’Ivoire, the American company holding 85-90 percent operating interests. The licenses, acquired 2023, cover about 1.5 million gross acres in the Tano basin, according to Murphy Oil. Murphy Oil was scheduled to submit a development plan for the Paon discovery in Block CI-103 to Ivorian authorities by the end of 2025, according to the company’s annual report for 2024. Elsewhere, Murphy Oil has scheduled two more spuds in Vietnam this year, both appraisal wells for last year’s Hai Su Vang oil discovery.

In an EBW Analytics Group report sent to Rigzone by the EBW team on Tuesday, Eli Rubin, an energy analyst at the company, noted that “historic cold launche[d]… soaring NYMEX gas futures”. “Frigid weather is set to reshape the near-term natural gas outlook as Arctic air masses flash across the eastern U.S. and the huge weather demand gain over the MLK [Martin Luther King Jr.] weekend threatens severe market dislocation,” Rubin said in the report. “DTN’s 278 gHDDs for Week 2 presents chances for the coldest weekly gHDD total since February 2021,” he added. “Saturday may reach 45 gHDDs – threatening production freeze-offs as Marcellus temps drop toward 0°F and the Bakken reaches -25°F. Risks are high for Rockies, MidCon, and Texas, but the current outlook suggests limited regional supply losses,” he continued. “Still, spot prices are likely to spike into the weekend. Weather models often misjudge the magnitude and extent of severe cold – and any shifts colder could put more supply at risk,” he said. Rubin went on to state in the report that the “frigid weather pivot comes with speculator short positions at a 14-month high – suggesting further bullish risks as shorts are forced to buy back gas”. The EBW analyst warned in the report, however, that volatility will stay high, and said any weather model warming into mid-February could allow a near-term price spike to eventually soften. Rubin highlighted in the EBW report that, “fundamentally, the immediate-term consequences of cold may be to wipe out the 190 billion cubic foot natural gas storage surplus to five-year norms in mid-January”. “While subject to a broad range of uncertainty depending on the magnitude and expanse of cold – and resulting production freeze-offs – current projections suggest a huge storage draw above 750 billion cubic feet over Weeks

TotalEnergies SE and Bahrain’s state-owned Bapco Energies have launched an equally owned trading platform to sell output from the Bapco refinery in the kingdom to the domestic and international markets. “As a competitive new player in the Middle East, BxT Trading will support Bahrain’s oil industry by leveraging its downstream portfolio for maximizing value and broadening its access to global markets”, said a joint statement online. “Through this joint venture, Bapco Energies will benefit from TotalEnergies’ global expertise in trading and will develop advanced trading, pricing, analysis and risk management capabilities. “With BxT Trading, TotalEnergies is strengthening its trading position in the Middle East, where the company already has trading activities, in addition to its international hubs in Houston, Geneva and Singapore. “This new initiative enhances the trading teams’ responsiveness and agility, reinforcing their local footprint that enables them to better address regional specificities”. Bapco Energies chair Nasser bin Hamad Al Khalifa said, “Through this partnership with TotalEnergies, we are enhancing our global trading capabilities, strengthening our downstream value chain and reinforcing Bahrain’s position as a competitive and trusted player in the international energy markets”. The Bapco refinery has a capacity of 380,000 barrels per day (bpd), increased 42 percent under a “modernization program”, Bapco Energies says on its website. The upgrade included the installation of a hydrocracking unit designed to convert 78 percent of lower-grade feedstock into distillates, which are then refined into high-margin diesel and kerosene, according to Bapco Energies. In its trading and shipping segment, TotalEnergies last year sold 2.28 million bpd of petroleum products to external customers, up from 1.95 million bpd in 2023, according to the company’s annual report. “The activities of Trading & Shipping are focused primarily on serving the needs of TotalEnergies, and mainly include selling and marketing the TotalEnergies’ crude oil production; providing