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Interior trims environmental reviews to speed project development

The US DOI issued a final rule to reform NEPA, aiming to speed up energy project approvals on federal lands by reducing procedural delays and clarifying review processes, despite criticism from environmental groups. Feb. 24, 2026 2 min read Key Highlights The final rule streamlines environmental review processes for energy projects on federal lands, aiming […]

The US DOI issued a final rule to reform NEPA, aiming to speed up energy project approvals on federal lands by reducing procedural delays and clarifying review processes, despite criticism from environmental groups.

Feb. 24, 2026

2 min read

Key Highlights

  • The final rule streamlines environmental review processes for energy projects on federal lands, aiming to reduce approval times.
  • It clarifies roles for federal, state, local, and tribal agencies, including procedures for public comments on significant projects.
  • Environmental groups and Democratic attorneys general have challenged the rule, citing concerns over diminished public participation and environmental protections.
  • Interior Secretary Doug Burgum emphasizes that the reforms restore NEPA to its original purpose of informing decisions without unnecessary delays.
  • The rule adopts over 80% of provisions from the draft NEPA reform.
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Equinor lets EPC contract for Gullfaks field

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Oxy cutting oil-and-gas capex by $300 million, eyes 1% production growth

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Diamondback’s Van’t Hof growing ‘more confident about the macro’

The early Barnett production will help Diamondback slightly increase its oil production this year from 2025’s average of 497,200 b/d. Van’t Hof and his team are eyeing 505,000 b/d this year with total expected production of 926,000-962,000 boe/d versus last year’s 921,000 boe/d. On a Feb. 24 conference call with analysts and investors, Van’t Hof said he’s feeling better than in recent quarters about that production number possibly moving up. The bigger picture for the oil-and-gas sector, he said, has grown a bit brighter. “Some people have been talking about [oversupplying the market] for 2 years. It just hasn’t seemed to happen as aggressively as some expected,” Van’t Hof said. “As we turn to higher demand in the summer and driving season […] people will start to find reasons to be less bearish […] In general, we just feel more confident about the macro after a couple of big shocks last year on the supply side and the demand side.” In the last 3 months of 2025, Diamondback posted a net loss of more than $1.4 billion due to a $3.6 billion impairment charge because of lower commodity prices’ effect on the company’s reserves. Adjusted EBITA fell to $2.0 billion from $2.5 billion in late 2024 and revenues during the quarter slipped to nearly $3.4 billion from $3.7 billion. Shares of Diamondback (Ticker: FANG) were essentially flat at $173.68 in early-afternoon trading on Feb. 24. Over the past 6 months, they are still up more than 20% and the company’s market value is now $50 billion.

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Vaalco Energy advances offshore drilling, development in Gabon and Ivory Coast

Vaalco Energy Inc. is drilling Etame field offshore Gabon and a preparing a field development plan (FDP) off Ivory Coast.  In Gabon, Vaalco drilled, completed, and placed Etame 15H-ST development well on production in Etame oil field in 1V block. The well has a 250 m lateral interval of net pay in high-quality Gamba sands near the top of the reservoir. The well had a stabilized flow rate of about 2,000 gross b/d of oil with a 38% water cut through a 42/64-in. choke and ESP at 54 Hz, confirming expectations from the ET-15P pilot well results. The company is working to stabilize pressure and manage the reservoir. West Etame step out exploration well spudded in mid-February. Drilling the well from the S1 slot on the Etame platform Etame West (ET-14P) exploration prospect has a 57% chance of geologic success and is expected to reach the target zone by mid-March. Etame Marin block lies in Congo basin about 32 km off the coast of Gabon. The license area is spread over five fields covering about 187 sq km. Vaalco is operator at the block with 58.8% interest. In Ivory Coast, Vaalco has been confirmed as operator (60%) of Kossipo field on the CI-40 Block southwest of Baobab field with partner PetroCI holding the remaining 40%. An FDP is expected to be completed in second-half 2026. New ocean bottom node (OBN) seismic data is expected to drive and derisk Vaalco’s updated evaluation and development plan. Estimated Gross 2C resources are 102-293 MMboe in place. The Baobab Ivorien (formerly MV10) floating production storage and offloading vessel (FPSO) is currently off the East coast of Africa and is expected to return to Ivory Coast by late March.  

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Ovintiv sets 2026 plan around Permian, Montney after declaring portfolio shift ‘complete’

2026 guidance For 2026, Ovintiv plans to invest $2.25–2.35 billion, up slightly from the $2.147 billion spent in 2025. McCracken said capital spend will be highest in first-quarter 2026 at about $625 million, “largely due to $50 million of capital allocated to the Anadarko and some drilling activity in the Montney that we inherited from NuVista.” The program is designed to deliver 205,000–212,000 b/d of oil and condensate, some 2 bcfd of natural gas, and 620,000–645,000 boe/d total company production. For full-year 2025, the company produced 614,500 boe/d.  The company is pursuing a “stay‑flat” oil strategy, maintaining liquids output through steady activity rather than aggressive volume growth.  Permian Ovintiv plans to run 5 rigs and 1-2 frac crews in the Permian basin this year, bringing 125–135 net wells online. Oil and condensate volumes are expected to average 117,000–123,000 b/d, with natural gas production of 270–295 MMcfd. The company projects 2026 drilling and completion costs below $600/ft, about $25/ft lower than 2025. Chief operating officer Gregory Givens credited faster cycle times and ongoing application of surfactant technology. Ovintiv has now deployed surfactants in about 300 Permian wells, generating a 9% uplift in oil productivity versus comparable control wells. Givens also reiterated that Ovintiv remains committed to its established cube‑development model. Responding to an analyst question, he said the company continues completing entire cubes at once, then returning “18 months later” to develop adjacent cubes—an approach that stabilizes well performance and reduces parent‑child degradation, he said. “We are getting the whole cube at the same time, and that is working quite well for us,” he said. The company plans to drill its first Barnett Woodford test well across Midland basin acreage in 2026. Ovintiv holds Barnett rights across roughly 100,000 acres and intends to move cautiously given the zone’s depth, higher pressure,

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Interior trims environmental reviews to speed project development

The US DOI issued a final rule to reform NEPA, aiming to speed up energy project approvals on federal lands by reducing procedural delays and clarifying review processes, despite criticism from environmental groups. Feb. 24, 2026 2 min read Key Highlights The final rule streamlines environmental review processes for energy projects on federal lands, aiming to reduce approval times. It clarifies roles for federal, state, local, and tribal agencies, including procedures for public comments on significant projects. Environmental groups and Democratic attorneys general have challenged the rule, citing concerns over diminished public participation and environmental protections. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum emphasizes that the reforms restore NEPA to its original purpose of informing decisions without unnecessary delays. The rule adopts over 80% of provisions from the draft NEPA reform.

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Enterprise Spotlight: Data Center Modernization

The demands for, and challenges of, deploying AI applications has ratcheted up the urgency to bring data centers into the AI age. It’s a strategic imperative and success requires partners across the infrastructure spectrum, from servers and storage to high-performance computing, networking, software, and security. IT leaders, intensely focused on data center modernization, need strategies, roadmaps, and products that will get them there. Download the March 2026 issue of the Enterprise Spotlight from the editors of CIO, Computerworld, CSO, InfoWorld, and Network World and learn how data center modernization is taking shape in 2026.

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Why do data centers need so much water?

Another legacy cooling technology in data centers is what’s called a cooling tower. A cooling tower sits outside of the main building, and the water cascades down these towers like a waterfall. However, the tower is open to the atmosphere to let natural cooling in. The churn of the water dissipates the heat, but there is significant evaporation in the process. “It evaporates a lot. I mean, we’re talking many, many Olympic swimming pools worth of water on a daily basis in some of these data centers,” said Green. “Some of the hyperscalers I work with are still using open cooling tower solutions, even today.” There were other reasons for using evaporation. For starters, evaporation equipment takes up a lot less space the chilled water equipment. Secondly is the price. Chilled water-cooling costs about 10% to 15% more than equivalent evaporation technology. But that is changing, Green notes, as more and more societal pressure, economic pressure around water consumption continues to move to the forefront, data centers are being forced to adapt. “We’re in a market now where we can use air cooled chillers that don’t evaporate water like a water-cooled chiller does, and have a very, very similar level of overall system efficiency,” he said. We are also seeing the advent of closed loop technology, where liquid is pumped into a system to absorb heat and then pumped out to be cooled and recirculated, much like a car radiator. Gamers have been on the forefront of liquid cooling and closed loop with all-in-one coolers for gaming PCs becoming standard issue now.

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Netskope targets AI-driven network bottlenecks with AI Fast Path

AI Fast Path focuses on optimizing traffic flows between enterprise users, the Netskope cloud, and major AI providers. Netskope says more than 90% of its 120 NewEdge data centers can now connect to leading AI applications in less than five milliseconds from the Netskope cloud, an effort aimed at minimizing added delay as traffic is inspected for data loss prevention (DLP), threat protection, and policy enforcement. “Customers realized that if they don’t adopt these AI apps, they’re probably going to be extinct in a few years. At the same time, we can’t afford to compromise on security,” Arandjelovic says. “So, with NewEdge and the AI Fast Path, we’ve created a super-optimized path where there is literally barely a bump in the wire. At the same time, they are not compromising security, because you’re passing through our cloud and getting all the benefits of our data protection and threat protection.” As a set of capabilities within NewEdge, AI Fast Path enables better performance and efficiency for AI applications. According to Netskope, AI Fast Path provides enterprises with:

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AMD strikes massive AI chip deal with Meta

The funding is also unique. Instead of a cash purchase, AMD has reportedly given Meta warrants to buy up to 160 million shares at $0.01 each. Stock warrants are financial instruments that give you the right (but not the obligation) to buy a company’s stock at a fixed price before a certain expiration date, according to the vendors. With 1.6 billion shares outstanding, Meta is poised to acquire 10% of AMD. But perhaps not. These shares vest only as Meta buys more computing capacity. The final tranche vests only if AMD’s stock price hits $600, according to a recent 8K filing. AMD shares are currently valued at just over $200 as of this writing. The deal is identical to the one AMD struck with OpenAI last October. That deal was also for 6 GW worth of GPUs and included a warrant for up to 160 million AMD common stock shares structured to payout once certain targets were met. Meta is not playing favorites. Last week it announced that it will also deploy standalone Nvidia Grace CPUs in its production data centers, citing greatly improved performance-per-watt. That doesn’t come as a surprise to Gaurav Gupta, vice president analyst at Gartner, who says we are compute constrained and Hyperscalers or frontier model companies will use a multisource approach to get access to compute.  “No one wants to be stuck with a single vendor. Diversify and then different workloads have different compute needs.,” he said.

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Nvidia lines up partners to boost security for industrial operations

Akamai extends its micro-segmentation and zero-trust security platform Guardicore to run on Nvidia BlueField GPUs The integration offloads user-configurable security processes from the host system to the Nvidia BlueField DPU and enables zero-trust segmentation without requiring software agents on fragile or legacy systems, according to Akamai. Organizations can implement this hardware-isolated, “agentless” security approach to help align with regulatory requirements and lower their risk profile for cyber insurance. “It delivers deep, out-of-band visibility across systems, networks, and applications without disrupting operations. Security policies can be enforced in real time and are capable of creating a strong protective boundary around critical operational systems. The result is trusted insight into operational activity and improved overall cyber resilience,” according to Akamai. Forescout works with Nvidia to bring zero-trust technology to OT networks Forescout applies network segmentation to contain lateral movement and enforce zero-trust controls. The technology would be further integrated into partnership work already being done by the two companies. By running Forescout’s on-premises sensor directly on the Nvidia BlueField, part of Nvidia Cybersecurity AI platform, customers can offload intensive computing tasks, such as deep packet inspections. This speeds up data processing, enhances asset intelligence, and improves real-time monitoring, providing security teams with the insights needed to stay ahead of emerging threats, according to Forescout. Palo Alto to demo Prisma AIRS AI Runtime Security on Nvidia BlueField DPU Palo Alto Networks recently partnered with Nvidia to run its Prisma AI-powered Radio Security(AIRs) package on the Nvidia BlueField DPU and will show off the technology at the conference. The technology is part of the Nvidia Enterprise AI Factory validated design and can offer real-time security protection for industrial network settings. “Prisma AIRS AI Runtime Security delivers deep visibility into industrial traffic and continuous monitoring for abnormal behavior. By running these security services on Nvidia BlueField, inspection

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Raising the temp on liquid cooling

IBM isn’t the only one. “We’ve been doing liquid cooling since 2012 on our supercomputers,” says Scott Tease, vice president and general manager of AI and high-performance computing at Lenovo’s infrastructure solutions group. “And we’ve been improving it ever since—we’re now on the sixth generation of that technology.” And the liquid Lenovo uses in its Neptune liquid cooling solution is warm water. Or, more precisely, hot water: 45 degrees Celsius. And when the water leaves the servers, it’s even hotter, Tease says. “I don’t have to chill that water, even if I’m in a hot climate,” he says. Even at high temperatures, the water still provides enough cooling to the chips that it has real value. “Generally, a data center will use evaporation to chill water down,” Tease adds. “Since we don’t have to chill the water, we don’t have to use evaporation. That’s huge amounts of savings on the water. For us, it’s almost like a perfect solution. It delivers the highest performance possible, the highest density possible, the lowest power consumption. So, it’s the most sustainable solution possible.” So, how is the water cooled down? It gets piped up to the roof, Tease says, where there are giant radiators with massive amounts of surface area. The heat radiates away, and then all the water flows right back to the servers again. Though not always. The hot water can also be used to, say, heat campus or community swimming pools. “We have data centers in the Nordics who are giving the heat to the local communities’ water systems,” Tease says.

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Microsoft will invest $80B in AI data centers in fiscal 2025

And Microsoft isn’t the only one that is ramping up its investments into AI-enabled data centers. Rival cloud service providers are all investing in either upgrading or opening new data centers to capture a larger chunk of business from developers and users of large language models (LLMs).  In a report published in October 2024, Bloomberg Intelligence estimated that demand for generative AI would push Microsoft, AWS, Google, Oracle, Meta, and Apple would between them devote $200 billion to capex in 2025, up from $110 billion in 2023. Microsoft is one of the biggest spenders, followed closely by Google and AWS, Bloomberg Intelligence said. Its estimate of Microsoft’s capital spending on AI, at $62.4 billion for calendar 2025, is lower than Smith’s claim that the company will invest $80 billion in the fiscal year to June 30, 2025. Both figures, though, are way higher than Microsoft’s 2020 capital expenditure of “just” $17.6 billion. The majority of the increased spending is tied to cloud services and the expansion of AI infrastructure needed to provide compute capacity for OpenAI workloads. Separately, last October Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said his company planned total capex spend of $75 billion in 2024 and even more in 2025, with much of it going to AWS, its cloud computing division.

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John Deere unveils more autonomous farm machines to address skill labor shortage

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Self-driving tractors might be the path to self-driving cars. John Deere has revealed a new line of autonomous machines and tech across agriculture, construction and commercial landscaping. The Moline, Illinois-based John Deere has been in business for 187 years, yet it’s been a regular as a non-tech company showing off technology at the big tech trade show in Las Vegas and is back at CES 2025 with more autonomous tractors and other vehicles. This is not something we usually cover, but John Deere has a lot of data that is interesting in the big picture of tech. The message from the company is that there aren’t enough skilled farm laborers to do the work that its customers need. It’s been a challenge for most of the last two decades, said Jahmy Hindman, CTO at John Deere, in a briefing. Much of the tech will come this fall and after that. He noted that the average farmer in the U.S. is over 58 and works 12 to 18 hours a day to grow food for us. And he said the American Farm Bureau Federation estimates there are roughly 2.4 million farm jobs that need to be filled annually; and the agricultural work force continues to shrink. (This is my hint to the anti-immigration crowd). John Deere’s autonomous 9RX Tractor. Farmers can oversee it using an app. While each of these industries experiences their own set of challenges, a commonality across all is skilled labor availability. In construction, about 80% percent of contractors struggle to find skilled labor. And in commercial landscaping, 86% of landscaping business owners can’t find labor to fill open positions, he said. “They have to figure out how to do

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2025 playbook for enterprise AI success, from agents to evals

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More 2025 is poised to be a pivotal year for enterprise AI. The past year has seen rapid innovation, and this year will see the same. This has made it more critical than ever to revisit your AI strategy to stay competitive and create value for your customers. From scaling AI agents to optimizing costs, here are the five critical areas enterprises should prioritize for their AI strategy this year. 1. Agents: the next generation of automation AI agents are no longer theoretical. In 2025, they’re indispensable tools for enterprises looking to streamline operations and enhance customer interactions. Unlike traditional software, agents powered by large language models (LLMs) can make nuanced decisions, navigate complex multi-step tasks, and integrate seamlessly with tools and APIs. At the start of 2024, agents were not ready for prime time, making frustrating mistakes like hallucinating URLs. They started getting better as frontier large language models themselves improved. “Let me put it this way,” said Sam Witteveen, cofounder of Red Dragon, a company that develops agents for companies, and that recently reviewed the 48 agents it built last year. “Interestingly, the ones that we built at the start of the year, a lot of those worked way better at the end of the year just because the models got better.” Witteveen shared this in the video podcast we filmed to discuss these five big trends in detail. Models are getting better and hallucinating less, and they’re also being trained to do agentic tasks. Another feature that the model providers are researching is a way to use the LLM as a judge, and as models get cheaper (something we’ll cover below), companies can use three or more models to

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OpenAI’s red teaming innovations define new essentials for security leaders in the AI era

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More OpenAI has taken a more aggressive approach to red teaming than its AI competitors, demonstrating its security teams’ advanced capabilities in two areas: multi-step reinforcement and external red teaming. OpenAI recently released two papers that set a new competitive standard for improving the quality, reliability and safety of AI models in these two techniques and more. The first paper, “OpenAI’s Approach to External Red Teaming for AI Models and Systems,” reports that specialized teams outside the company have proven effective in uncovering vulnerabilities that might otherwise have made it into a released model because in-house testing techniques may have missed them. In the second paper, “Diverse and Effective Red Teaming with Auto-Generated Rewards and Multi-Step Reinforcement Learning,” OpenAI introduces an automated framework that relies on iterative reinforcement learning to generate a broad spectrum of novel, wide-ranging attacks. Going all-in on red teaming pays practical, competitive dividends It’s encouraging to see competitive intensity in red teaming growing among AI companies. When Anthropic released its AI red team guidelines in June of last year, it joined AI providers including Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, and even the U.S.’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which all had released red teaming frameworks. Investing heavily in red teaming yields tangible benefits for security leaders in any organization. OpenAI’s paper on external red teaming provides a detailed analysis of how the company strives to create specialized external teams that include cybersecurity and subject matter experts. The goal is to see if knowledgeable external teams can defeat models’ security perimeters and find gaps in their security, biases and controls that prompt-based testing couldn’t find. What makes OpenAI’s recent papers noteworthy is how well they define using human-in-the-middle

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