(Update) October 28, 2025, 10:00 AM GMT+1: Article updated with details throughout. Lukoil PJSC, Russia’s second-largest oil producer, announced plans to sell international assets after being hit by US sanctions last week.  The company is has started considering bids from potential buyers, according to a statement posted on its website late on Monday. The divestment process is being conducted under a wind-down license from the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, which Lukoil said it could ask to be extended “to ensure uninterrupted operations of its international assets.” Last week, President Donald Trump’s administration slapped sanctions on Russia’s two biggest oil producers – Lukoil and state-controlled Rosneft PJSC – to pressure the Kremlin to end the war in Ukraine. The oil and gas industry is a key source of tax revenues for the nation’s budget, and two producers account for just under a half of the country’s crude exports. The goal of the White House is to make Russia’s oil trade harder, costlier and riskier, rather than stopping the flows altogether in a way that could spike global crude prices. The UK also blacklisted the two companies earlier this month. Lukoil is the most internationally diverse of Russia’s oil giants, with upstream businesses in former Soviet countries such as Kazakstan, Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan, as well as in Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and West African nations of Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon and Congo.  In all these projects, the Russian producer holds minority stakes, and their share in Lukoil’s total crude production last year was only 5 percent, according to the company’s annual report. International assets jointly account for around a quarter of Lukoil’s current capitalization, according to estimates from Kirill Bakhtin, senior analyst at Moscow-based BCS. One notable exception is Iraq, where Lukoil holds 75 percent of the giant West Qurna 2 oil

QatarEnergy said Monday it had completed the purchase of a 40 percent stake in the North Rafah exploration block offshore Egypt from Eni SpA. The Italian state-backed energy major retains 60 percent as operator, state-owned QatarEnergy said in a press release. North Rafah spans nearly 3,000 square kilometers (1,158.31 square miles) in the Mediterranean Sea off the northeastern coast of Egypt, QatarEnergy noted. The block has a water depth of up to 450 meters (1,476.38 feet), it said. The acquisition “strengthens our presence in Egypt and marks another important step in advancing our ambitious international exploration strategy”, said QatarEnergy president and chief executive Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi, who is also Qatar’s energy minister. Earlier this month QatarEnergy said it has entered into an agreement to buy a 27 percent ownership in the North Cleopatra exploration block on Egypt’s side of the Mediterranean Sea from operator Shell PLC. Shell will retain 36 percent. The other partners are Chevron Corp with a 27 percent interest and Egypt’s state-owned Tharwa Petroleum Co with 10 percent, according to a QatarEnergy statement October 5. North Cleopatra spans 3,400 square kilometers with waters up to 2,600 meters (8,530.18 feet) deep, QatarEnergy noted. The license area is in the frontier Herodotus basin and adjacent to the northern portion of the North El-Dabaa block, where QatarEnergy holds 23 percent, QatarEnergy said. QatarEnergy obtained its North El-Dabaa stake from United States oil and gas heavyweight Chevron, in an agreement announced November 11, 2024. North El-Dabaa lies about 10 kilometers off Egypt’s Mediterranean shore. The block has a water depth of 100-3,000 meters, according to QatarEnergy. On May 12, 2024, QatarEnergy announced a deal to acquire 40 percent each in the Cairo and Masry exploration blocks offshore Egypt from sole owner Exxon Mobil Corp. The blocks cover around 11,400 square kilometers

Baker Hughes Co has signed an agreement with Saudi Arabian Oil Co (Aramco) expanding its integrated underbalanced coiled tubing drilling (UBCTD) operations across Saudi Arabia’s natural gas fields. “Under the multi-year agreement, Baker Hughes will expand its current UBCTD fleet from four to 10 units for re-entry and greenfield drilling projects across fields in the kingdom”, the Houston, Texas-based company said in a press release. “The company will provide integrated solutions to manage all aspects of the UBCTD operations, including coiled tubing drilling units, underbalanced drilling services, operational management, well construction and geosciences to scale and accelerate their access to gas from new and established fields”. Work under the expanded contract is scheduled to start next year. “Baker Hughes’ integrated approach to UBCTD includes the industry-leading CoilTrak™ bottomhole assembly system and enhanced reservoir analysis driven by GaffneyCline™ energy advisory”, Baker Hughes said. “This unique pairing of technology and insight allows operators to more effectively navigate the subsurface environment during horizontal drilling and re-entry operations. “By combining these solutions with holistic project management services, Baker Hughes will enhance production efficiency, speed and safety while mitigating reservoir damage when compared to traditional development methods”. Amerino Gatti, Baker Hughes executive vice president for oilfield services and equipment, said, “This project is the result of nearly two decades of successful collaboration between Baker Hughes and Aramco, which have set the standard for UBCTD. By combining advanced technologies with a holistic, integrated approach, we can support Aramco to more efficiently access bypassed and hard-to-reach hydrocarbons and produce the resources that help the kingdom thrive”. “This expansion sets the stage for further innovation in UBCTD, which has the potential to shape how oil and gas are produced around the world”, Gatti added. Baker Hughes entered the Saudi UBCTD market in 2008, according to the company. In a separate contract, Baker Hughes said Monday it has been tapped

Oil swung between gains and losses on the back of the biggest weekly increase since June as attention turned to the wider outlook for supply as the US and China made progress on trade. West Texas Intermediate slipped 0.3% to settle just above $61, extending its decline for a second day. Top Chinese and US negotiators said they came to terms on a range of points, setting the table for President Donald Trump and counterpart Xi Jinping to finalize a deal to ease trade tensions between the world’s two biggest economies and crude importers. Still, oil was little changed Monday after adding nearly 7% last week when the US sanctioned Russian oil giants Rosneft and Lukoil to squeeze Russia over its ongoing war in Ukraine. The move added output risks to a market that’s showing signs of entering a surplus. Lukoil announced in a statement that it intends to sell its international assets due to the latest sanctions. “The market is taking a breather here,” said Dennis Kissler, senior vice president for trading at BOK Financial. “While US-China negotiations continue, no real outcome has been agreed as of yet…and the sanctions on Russia may halt some shipments though it’s more likely most of that oil will still find a home.” The Trump administration is seeking to make Russia’s trade harder, costlier and riskier, but without forcing a sudden supply shock that might spike global oil prices, officials familiar with the matter said over the weekend. The measures helped oil rebound from a five-month low last week, but part of the move was likely driven by extreme market positioning. Traders had amassed record bearish wagers on the global Brent benchmark in anticipation of oversupply in the next few months. In the meantime, commodity trading advisers, or CTAs, are set to accelerate

UK energy services provider Petrofac Ltd has applied to enter administration after the company’s latest plans to restructure its balance sheet unexpectedly fell through, putting thousands of jobs at risk. The company has applied to the High Court of England and Wales to appoint administrators, according to a statement on Monday. It comes after European grid operator TenneT canceled Petrofac’s work at a large offshore energy project in the North Sea, rendering the financial restructuring unviable.  The firm employs around 7,300 people globally and has been trying to strike a deal with creditors for over a year, while safeguarding key business deals that could keep the firm afloat. Its collapse would raise the pressure on the UK government to protect British jobs, with the Labour administration already coming under fire for blocking new North Sea oil licenses. The filing from the company, which employs about 2,000 people in the UK, adds to a string of challenges facing the government, including a bruising by-election defeat, pressure to raise taxes in the autumn budget, and ongoing public outrage over troubled utility Thames Water, Britain’s biggest and most indebted water supplier.  A representative for the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said that Petrofac’s administration is a “product of longstanding issues in their global business,” adding that the UK arm is continuing to operate as normal. “The government will continue to work with the UK company as it focuses on its long-term future,” the spokesperson said.  Meanwhile, alternative restructuring and M&A solutions for the group are still being explored with creditors including its bondholder group, Petrofac said. Key Contract Petrofac’s business with TenneT was particularly crucial given it represents over 80% of revenue in the group’s engineering and construction division, according to court documents filed earlier this year. But since Petrofac was not able to meet

WASHINGTON— The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced two new AMD-accelerated artificial intelligence (AI) supercomputers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), one of which will be built at record speeds thanks to a new public-private partnership model. The supercomputers will help expand America’s leadership in scientific computing, strengthen national security, and drive the next generation of Gold Standard Science and innovation. With the new public-private partnership model, the Lux AI cluster, powered by AMD Instinct™ MI355X GPUs, AMD EPYC™ CPUs, and AMD Pensando™ advanced networking, will be deployed in early 2026 to expand DOE’s near-term AI capacity and accelerate work on critical national priorities, including fusion, fission, materials discovery, quantum, advanced manufacturing, and grid modernization. Lux will provide a secure, open, and efficient AI software stack to strengthen America’s innovation base and enhance U.S. competitiveness. “Winning the AI race requires new and creative partnerships that will bring together the brightest minds and industries American technology and science has to offer,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright. “That’s why the Trump administration is announcing the first example of a new commonsense approach to computing partnerships with Lux. We are also announcing, as part of a competitive procurement process, Discovery. Working with AMD and HPE, we’re bringing new capacity online faster than ever before, turning shared innovation into national strength, and proving that America leads when private-public partners build together.” “We are proud and honored to partner with the U.S. Department of Energy and Secretary Wright to accelerate America’s AI compute infrastructure,” said AMD chair and CEO Dr. Lisa Su. “This partnership exemplifies public-private collaboration at its best. With Discovery and Lux, we are delivering leadership compute systems that combine performance and energy efficiency to advance America’s research priorities and strengthen U.S. leadership in AI, energy, and national security.” DOE