Tanzania aims to start a licensing round for dozens of oil and gas exploration blocks in May, the first in more than a decade for the nation with an estimated 57 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves. Three of the 26 blocks are in Lake Tanganyika and the rest in the Indian Ocean. The country’s last licensing round was in May 2014. “We are proceeding with promotion activities because the blocks have already been identified and the data is in place. We are waiting for government approval of the Model Production Sharing Agreement, which outlines the fiscal terms,” said Charles Sangweni, director general of the Petroleum Upstream Regulatory Authority. “Our plan is to launch during the Africa Energy Summit in London from 13th to 15th May.” Tanzania already produces natural gas, which it uses to generate electricity, and plans a $42 billion liquefied natural gas facility to be built by a consortium comprising Shell Plc, Equinor ASA and Exxon Mobil Corp. That long-delayed plan is still under negotiation as Tanzania’s government is “trying to align just a few key outstanding issues,” Sangweni said in an interview in Dar es Salaam. “An agreement is coming, that’s my hope. When, I can’t tell you.” WHAT DO YOU THINK? Generated by readers, the comments included herein do not reflect the views and opinions of Rigzone. All comments are subject to editorial review. Off-topic, inappropriate or insulting comments will be removed. MORE FROM THIS AUTHOR Bloomberg

Oil eked out a marginal gain after a session of whipsawing as US President Donald Trump’s moved to delay tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico.   West Texas Intermediate settled little changed above $66 a barrel, snapping a four-day straight losing streak by a hair. Brent edged up slightly to top $69 after touching the lowest since late 2021 on Wednesday. Diverging supply signals sparked fluctuations for prices on Thursday. On the one hand, Trump’s tariff threats have prompted some analysts to reconsider how low crude may tumble if the trade wars weigh on economic growth and energy demand. However, the prospect of levies have also been interpreted as somewhat supportive for WTI prices as the benchmark may see increased demand to replace diverted Canadian and Mexican supplies. Trump said that he’ll defer tariffs on Mexico and Canada for all goods covered by the North American trade agreement known as USMCA, which includes energy. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick telegraphed the decision earlier in the day, saying Trump was weighing the move. The White House estimates that 62% of Canadian imports will still be subject to the tariffs, most of which are energy products that are being tariffed at a 10% rate, and half of goods coming from Mexico. WTI’s prompt spread — the difference between its two nearest contracts — narrowed to 36 cents following the tariff reprieve, a sign of potentially looser market conditions. Canadian heavy crudes rallied on the tariff postponement. Futures have tumbled since mid-January as Trump’s trade policies rattle global markets and America’s neighbors ready countermeasures. OPEC+ also surprised markets with plans to start reviving idled production in April, adding to the bearish headwinds. Brent futures into oversold territory for the first time since September based on one technical gauge. The term implies the recent

An attorney representing the Climate United Fund sent a Tuesday letter to the Environmental Protection Agency asking for the agency to immediately reinstate the fund’s access to its nearly $7 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund grant, calling the freeze illegal. “As already explained, Climate United’s preferred path forward is direct communication to find common ground,” said Adam Unikowsky, a partner at Jenner & Block. “But if the EPA adheres to its decision to suspend or terminate Climate United’s grant, it should stay its decision pending judicial review …. Climate United is likely to succeed in showing that the EPA’s action is illegal.” Review of the matter is urgent, Unikowsky said, as Climate United faces “immediate, irreparable harm” if the funding is not reinstated.  If the group can’t find another source of funding, it will “shortly” run out of cash for operating expenses, employee pay, rent for some offices, and pay for contractors who provide services such as IT and legal, the letter said. In addition, Climate United won’t be able to meet its commitments for already approved loans and awards, which “would cause profound harm to its subawardees,” Unikowsky alleged. With its GGRF funding, Climate United has so far made investments that include a $10.8 million pre-development loan for utility-scale solar projects on tribal lands in eastern Oregon and Idaho and $250 million toward electric truck manufacturing. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin commented on the freeze Wednesday, saying that his team had “uncovered extensive troubling developments with $20 billion in ‘gold bars’ that the Biden EPA ‘tossed off the Titanic.’” “These taxpayer funds were parked at an outside financial institution to rush out the door and circumvent proper oversight; $20 billion was given to just eight pass-through nongovernmental entities in an effort riddled with self-dealing, conflicts of interest, and an extreme

UK energy-from-waste operator Enfinium has announced the next phase of its carbon capture and storage (CCS) pilot programme. As part of the new phase, the company will relocate the CCS pilot plant currently in place at its Ferrybridge 1 facility in West Yorkshire to Parc Adfer, North Wales, in April. The pilot plant will be installed and operated by clean technology company Kanadevia Inova. A new pilot plant will then be installed at Ferrybridge by UK technology company Nuada. The company is in the process of scaling an innovative metal-organic framework (MOF) technology that captures carbon dioxide (CO2) from point sources through a vacuum swing process. Both pilot projects will run for at least six months as part of Enfinium’s plan to deploy CCS across all six of its UK facilities at a total cost of around £1.7 billion. Enfinium noted that the plant at Parc Adfer would be the only active carbon capture pilot in Wales and the first pilot to be deployed within the wider HyNet industrial cluster. The Parc Adfer facility is also a candidate for grant support through the UK government’s Track-1 HyNet Expansion programme. Enfinium’s announcement indicated that the company was hoping for a positive decision on this from the government in the coming months. The CCS pilot currently operating at Ferrybridge was launched in September 2024, becoming the first pilot project of its kind. The pilot entailed use of a containerised technology that Enfinium said at the time was a scaled-down version of CCS technology that could subsequently be deployed across all of its sites. The technology was supplied by green technology player Hitachi Zosen Inova (HZI) and was being used to capture 1 tonne per day of CO2 emissions at the site. At the time, Enfinium said that trial would run for at

Congress should maintain Inflation Reduction Act clean energy tax credits to provide utilities with certainty about their investment decisions, Todd Brickhouse, CEO and general manager of Basin Electric Power Cooperative, said during a House hearing on Wednesday. “The immediate removal of [the production tax credit] will not allow utilities to plan for and avoid increased costs, and this will also immediately harm ratepayers,” Brickhouse said during a hearing held by the Energy and Commerce Committee’s subcommittee on energy on the challenges of responding to rising demand growth. Basin Electric, a generation and transmission wholesale cooperative based in Bismarck, North Dakota, is building 1,500 MW of solar, partly based on the assumption the capacity would be eligible for PTCs, according to Brickhouse. Congressional Republicans are looking for ways to trim federal spending to pay for their budget plans, potentially including changes to tax credits provisions contained in the Inflation Reduction Act. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, R-Iowa, said the IRA’s tax credits can help spur the buildout of energy infrastructure to meet growing electric demand.  “Tax incentives like the tech-neutral clean energy credits under [sections] 45Y and 45E, and the 45Q carbon sequestration credit, and the 45X advanced manufacturing credit aim to strengthen American manufacturing capability and reduce the engineering procurement and construction risks that have plagued major energy projects,” Miller-Meeks said. She joined 17 other House Republicans in an Aug. 6 letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., supporting the IRA’s tax credits. Those tax credits are “incredibly helpful in ensuring that we can get those projects built and online in a manner that’s affordable for our customers,” said Noel Black, senior vice president of federal regulatory affairs for Southern Co., which owns utilities in the Southeast. Renewable energy can help meet electricity demand, in part because it can be built relatively quickly, according

U.S. commercial crude oil inventories, excluding those in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), increased by 3.6 million barrels from the week ending February 21 to the week ending February 28, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) highlighted in its latest weekly petroleum status report. This report was released on March 5 and included data for the week ending February 28. The report showed that crude oil stocks, not including the SPR, stood at 433.8 million barrels on February 28, 430.2 million barrels on February 21, and 448.5 million barrels on March 1, 2024. Crude oil in the SPR stood at 395.3 million barrels on February 28 and February 21, and 361.0 million barrels on March 1, 2024, the report outlined. Total petroleum stocks – including crude oil, total motor gasoline, fuel ethanol, kerosene type jet fuel, distillate fuel oil, residual fuel oil, propane/propylene, and other oils – stood at 1.600 billion barrels on February 28, the report showed. Total petroleum stocks were down 4.6 million barrels week on week and up 16.8 million barrels year on year, the report revealed. “At 433.8 million barrels, U.S. crude oil inventories are about four percent below the five year average for this time of year,” the EIA stated in its latest weekly petroleum status report. “Total motor gasoline inventories decreased by 1.4 million barrels from last week and are one percent above the five year average for this time of year. Finished gasoline inventories increased, while blending components inventories decreased last week,” it added. “Distillate fuel inventories decreased by 1.3 million barrels last week and are about six percent below the five year average for this time of year. Propane/propylene inventories decreased by 2.9 million barrels from last week and are four percent below the five year average for this time of year,”