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Production Resumes at Keddington Oilfield

Union Jack Oil plc, a UK and USA-focused onshore hydrocarbon exploration and production company, has restarted production at the Keddington oilfield. The company said in a media release production resumed following major site upgrades in 2024 and 2025. In June 2025, Keddington produced a total of 992 barrels of oil over 23 days, with an […]

Union Jack Oil plc, a UK and USA-focused onshore hydrocarbon exploration and production company, has restarted production at the Keddington oilfield. The company said in a media release production resumed following major site upgrades in 2024 and 2025.

In June 2025, Keddington produced a total of 992 barrels of oil over 23 days, with an average of 10.4 hours of pumping per day and a gross flow rate of 43 barrels daily, the company said. The newly installed equipment and facilities are functioning well and ongoing adjustments are being made to optimize production, it said. Union Jack holds a 55 percent interest in Keddington.

“As expected, current flow rates from Keddington are exhibiting a material increase in oil production to those seen prior to the site upgrades”, David Bramhill, Executive Chairman of Union Jack, said. “Over 1,450 barrels of high-quality oil have now been produced and sold from Keddington since recommissioning, contributing meaningful additional revenues, complementing our established cash flow from Wressle in the UK and our growth projects in the USA at Moccasin, the Andrews Field, and our Mineral Royalty portfolio”.

The Keddington oilfield is located along the highly prospective East Barkwith Ridge, an east-west structural high on the southern margin of the Humber Basin, according to Union Jack.

In 2024, a significant upgrade of the site’s production facilities and bund area was initiated and completed in May. A technical review by the Operator confirmed that an undrained oil resource exists on the eastern side of the Keddington field. Planning approval for additional drilling is already secured, offering an opportunity to boost production through a development sidetrack from an existing well, the company said.

To support target confirmation and well design, re-processing of legacy 3D seismic data has been finalized, Union Jack said.

Operator models suggest that infill drilling could enhance recoveries by 113,000 to 183,000 barrels of oil, depending on the permeability model and infill target combination. A target for a step-out well has been identified, and plans are in place to drill when macroeconomic conditions are favorable, with planning consent already granted, the company said.

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Hardcoded root credentials in Cisco Unified CM trigger max-severity alert

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ADNOC Drilling Wins $800MM Contract for Fracking Services

ADNOC Drilling Company said it was awarded a contract valued at up to $800 million by ADNOC Onshore for the provision of integrated hydraulic fracturing services for conventional and tight reservoirs. The five-year agreement is set to begin in the third quarter, ADNOC Drilling said in a news release. The contract’s scope of work supports ADNOC’s strategic goal to accelerate the development of conventional and tight reservoirs across the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and includes the design, execution, and evaluation of multistage hydraulic fracturing treatments, which will be deployed across a wide range of assets in Abu Dhabi, according to the release. Fracturing services for conventional and tight reservoirs are used to enhance the flow of oil or gas through existing natural pathways and optimize production by improving flow rates, the company said. ADNOC Drilling said it plans to “deploy advanced technologies throughout the project to maximize efficiency and performance”. Proprietary fracturing simulation software will be used to optimize every stage of the operation, increasing flow rates and overall hydrocarbon recovery. Intelligent fluid systems will adapt dynamically in real-time to reservoir conditions, improving fracture efficiency and reducing environmental impact, while automated pumping units and blending systems will enhance safety, streamline operations and reduce the need for on-site manpower, the company stated. ADNOC Drilling’s new CEO, Abdulla Ateya Al Messabi, said, “This significant contract is a powerful endorsement of ADNOC Drilling’s expanding capabilities and our trusted partnership with ADNOC Onshore. It reflects our ability to deliver high-impact, technologically advanced fracturing services that will help unlock the UAE’s energy potential. As we continue our transformation, we are proud to support the nation’s strategic energy goals and reinforce our position as a leader in integrated drilling and completion solutions”. The award “further reinforces ADNOC Drilling’s leadership in high-tech oilfield services, combining next-generation equipment,

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Vietnam Renews Block 15-1 License for 25 Years

State-owned Vietnam National Industry-Energy Group (PetroVietnam) and its international partners in Block 15-1 have signed a new production sharing contract (PSC). The new 25-year PSC paves the way for a final investment decision on the Phase 2B development in the White Lion (Su Tu Trang) gas and condensate field, which aims to deliver 125 million standard cubic feet of gas a day for seven years “to support Vietnam’s rapidly growing domestic market”, Perenco Group said in a press release Thursday. The Cuu Long Basin’s Block 15-1 is located 180 kilometers (111.85 miles) southeast of Ho Chi Minh City in waters about 47 meters (154.2 feet) deep. It started production 2003 through the Black Lion field, which holds estimated reserves of 600 million barrels of oil. Golden Lion, Brown Lion and White Lion were subsequently put into production October 2008, September 2014 and November 2016 respectively. The block reached 400 million barrels of oil production in 2022, according to PetroVietnam. “With a series of mines discovered and continuously put into exploitation, Cuu Long Petroleum Operating Company – the unit exploiting and developing projects at Block 15-1 has become the 2nd largest oil exploiter in Vietnam”, PetroVietnam said separately. Oil is processed at the Dung Quat refinery for delivery to the domestic market. The block also supplies gas to Vietnam’s Southeast region, according to PetroVietnam. “[N]ot many offshore oil and gas blocks in Vietnam possess both large-scale commercial oil and gas fields. Block 15-1 is one of the few rare exceptions”, PetroVietnam said. “Here, oil fields such as Black Lion, Golden Lion, and Brown Lion operate in parallel with the White Lion gas field – creating an integrated exploitation ecosystem, optimizing both technical infrastructure and operational efficiency”. In the new PSC, PetroVietnam owns 59 percent through Oil and Gas Exploration and Production Corp. (PVEP). Perenco

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Petronas Signs Up for 20-Year Supply from CP2 LNG

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Executives Reveal Where They Expect WTI Price to Land in Future

Executives from oil and gas firms have revealed where they expect the West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil price to be at various points in the future in the second quarter Dallas Fed Energy Survey, which was released recently. The survey asked participants what they expect WTI prices to be in six months, one year, two years, and five years. Executives from 120 oil and gas firms answered this question and gave a mean response of $68 per barrel for the six month and year marks, $72 per barrel for the two year mark, and $77 per barrel for the five year mark, the survey showed. Executives from 124 oil and gas firms answered this question in the first quarter Dallas Fed Energy Survey and gave a mean response of $68 per barrel for the six month mark, $70 per barrel for the year mark, $74 per barrel for the two year mark, and $82 per barrel for the five year mark, that survey showed. The latest survey also asked participants what they expect the WTI crude oil price to be at the end of 2025. Executives from 135 oil and gas firms answered this question and gave an average response of $68.18 per barrel, the survey highlighted. The low forecast was $50 per barrel, the high forecast was $85 per barrel, and the average daily spot price during the survey was $69.81 per barrel, the survey pointed out. Executives from 129 oil and gas firms answered this question in the first quarter Dallas Fed Energy Survey and gave an average response of $68.32 per barrel, that survey showed. The low forecast came in at $50 per barrel, the high forecast was $100 per barrel, and the average daily spot price during the survey was $67.60 per barrel, that survey

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DOF Awarded Multiple Contracts in Brazil, Canada

DOF Group ASA said it has been awarded two new contracts in Brazil for Skandi Logger, an anchor handling tug supply (AHTS) vessel with a 250-ton bollard pull, by Petrobras. The vessel has been contracted by Petrobras for four years, expected to begin in February 2026. The contract was won in a tender process, DOF said in a news release. In another tender process, Skandi Achiever was also contracted as a remotely operated vehicle support vessel (RSV) for a four-year engagement with Petrobras. The contract is anticipated to start in December in direct continuation of its current contract with another client in Brazil. The contract will use Achiever’s two work-class remotely operated vehicles (WROVs) and subsea crane, according to the release. DOF stated that the two contracts have a combined value of more than $275 million. Meanwhile, DOF’s Skandi Inventor was awarded multiple contracts in the Atlantic region, securing more than 100 days of firm work, with additional options available, according to a separate statement. The Skandi Inventor, a dynamic positioning class 3 (DP3) construction vessel equipped with a 400-ton active heave compensated (AHC) crane and a large working deck, has recently undergone significant upgrades, the company said. The vessel is now fitted with two brand new WROVs and a modern survey suite, all of which will be fully operated by DOF. DOF CEO Mons Aase said, “We are pleased to welcome the Skandi Inventor to the North Sea and to see immediate project intake across Q2, Q3 and Q4 2025. These awards reflect DOF’s strong position across both [the] Oil & Gas and Renewable segments”. Preparations are already underway, with DOF delivering a full scope of project management, engineering, logistics, and offshore execution as part of the awarded campaigns, the company said. DOF said it also won a “substantial”

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Santos to Supply QatarEnergy 0.5 MMtpa of LNG for 2 Years

QatarEnergy Trading LLC (QET), the LNG trading arm of state-owned QatarEnergy, has contracted Australia’s Santos Ltd. for the supply of 500,000 metric tons a year of the super-chilled gas for two years. Delivery will start 2026 on an ex-ship basis. The cargos will be sourced from Santos’ portfolio, it said in a press release. “Santos’ portfolio of high-quality, tier-one customers now comprises, Hokkaido Gas Co., Ltd, Shizuoka Gas Co. Ltd, TotalEnergies Gas & Power Asia Limited, Glencore Singapore Pte Ltd, Mitsubishi Corporation, PETRONAS, KOGAS, Osaka Gas, JERA, Sinopec (Unipec Asia Co Ltd), CPC Corporation, and now QET”, Santos said. “The portfolio is around 90 per cent contracted and around 85 percent oil-linked on average between 2025-29. “Average contract pricing across the whole portfolio is estimated at around 14.7 percent slope to Brent over 2025 to 2027… Santos can deliver incremental margin over and above the contracted pricing by leveraging the flexibility of its equity lifted volumes combined with its portfolio of destination supply contracts, utilizing charter LNG vessels”. Santos managing director and chief executive Kevin Gallagher said, “This contract reinforces our ability to leverage our flexible LNG portfolio to achieve great outcomes for Santos and our customers.  It further complements recent mid-and long-term LNG Sales and Purchase Agreements, underscoring Santos’ robust LNG portfolio and strong customer relationships in the region”. “We continue to see very strong demand in Asia for high heating value LNG from projects such as Barossa and PNG LNG, as well as for reliable regional supply”, Gallagher added. Santos is progressing toward production in the Barossa Gas Project, which involves developing the namesake gas field offshore Australia’s Northern Territory to provide a new source for the existing Darwin LNG facility. Last month it said the BW Opal floating production, storage and offloading vessel arrived at the field, keeping

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CoreWeave achieves a first with Nvidia GB300 NVL72 deployment

The deployment, Kimball said, “brings Dell quality to the commodity space. Wins like this really validate what Dell has been doing in reshaping its portfolio to accommodate the needs of the market — both in the cloud and the enterprise.” Although concerns were voiced last year that Nvidia’s next-generation Blackwell data center processors had significant overheating problems when they were installed in high-capacity server racks, he said that a repeat performance is unlikely. Nvidia, said Kimball “has been very disciplined in its approach with its GPUs and not shipping silicon until it is ready. And Dell almost doubles down on this maniacal quality focus. I don’t mean to sound like I have blind faith, but I’ve watched both companies over the last several years be intentional in delivering product in volume. Especially as the competitive market starts to shape up more strongly, I expect there is an extremely high degree of confidence in quality.” CoreWeave ‘has one purpose’ He said, “like Lambda Labs, Crusoe and others, [CoreWeave] seemingly has one purpose (for now): deliver GPU capacity to the market. While I expect these cloud providers will expand in services, I think for now the type of customer employing services is on the early adopter side of AI. From an enterprise perspective, I have to think that organizations well into their AI journey are the consumers of CoreWeave.”  “CoreWeave is also being utilized by a lot of the model providers and tech vendors playing in the AI space,” Kimball pointed out. “For instance, it’s public knowledge that Microsoft, OpenAI, Meta, IBM and others use CoreWeave GPUs for model training and more. It makes sense. These are the customers that truly benefit from the performance lift that we see from generation to generation.”

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Oracle to power OpenAI’s AGI ambitions with 4.5GW expansion

“For CIOs, this shift means more competition for AI infrastructure. Over the next 12–24 months, securing capacity for AI workloads will likely get harder, not easier. Though cost is coming down but demand is increasing as well, due to which CIOs must plan earlier and build stronger partnerships to ensure availability,” said Pareekh Jain, CEO at EIIRTrend & Pareekh Consulting. He added that CIOs should expect longer wait times for AI infrastructure. To mitigate this, they should lock in capacity through reserved instances, diversify across regions and cloud providers, and work with vendors to align on long-term demand forecasts.  “Enterprises stand to benefit from more efficient and cost-effective AI infrastructure tailored to specialized AI workloads, significantly lower their overall future AI-related investments and expenses. Consequently, CIOs face a critical task: to analyze and predict the diverse AI workloads that will prevail across their organizations, business units, functions, and employee personas in the future. This foresight will be crucial in prioritizing and optimizing AI workloads for either in-house deployment or outsourced infrastructure, ensuring strategic and efficient resource allocation,” said Neil Shah, vice president at Counterpoint Research. Strategic pivot toward AI data centers The OpenAI-Oracle deal comes in stark contrast to developments earlier this year. In April, AWS was reported to be scaling back its plans for leasing new colocation capacity — a move that AWS Vice President for global data centers Kevin Miller described as routine capacity management, not a shift in long-term expansion plans. Still, these announcements raised questions around whether the hyperscale data center boom was beginning to plateau. “This isn’t a slowdown, it’s a strategic pivot. The era of building generic data center capacity is over. The new global imperative is a race for specialized, high-density, AI-ready compute. Hyperscalers are not slowing down; they are reallocating their capital to

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Arista Buys VeloCloud to reboot SD-WANs amid AI infrastructure shift

What this doesn’t answer is how Arista Networks plans to add newer, security-oriented Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) capabilities to VeloCloud’s older SD-WAN technology. Post-acquisition, it still has only some of the building blocks necessary to achieve this. Mapping AI However, in 2025 there is always more going on with networking acquisitions than simply adding another brick to the wall, and in this case it’s the way AI is changing data flows across networks. “In the new AI era, the concepts of what comprises a user and a site in a WAN have changed fundamentally. The introduction of agentic AI even changes what might be considered a user,” wrote Arista Networks CEO, Jayshree Ullal, in a blog highlighting AI’s effect on WAN architectures. “In addition to people accessing data on demand, new AI agents will be deployed to access data independently, adapting over time to solve problems and enhance user productivity,” she said. Specifically, WANs needed modernization to cope with the effect AI traffic flows are having on data center traffic. Sanjay Uppal, now VP and general manager of the new VeloCloud Division at Arista Networks, elaborated. “The next step in SD-WAN is to identify, secure and optimize agentic AI traffic across that distributed enterprise, this time from all end points across to branches, campus sites, and the different data center locations, both public and private,” he wrote. “The best way to grab this opportunity was in partnership with a networking systems leader, as customers were increasingly looking for a comprehensive solution from LAN/Campus across the WAN to the data center.”

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Data center capacity continues to shift to hyperscalers

However, even though colocation and on-premises data centers will continue to lose share, they will still continue to grow. They just won’t be growing as fast as hyperscalers. So, it creates the illusion of shrinkage when it’s actually just slower growth. In fact, after a sustained period of essentially no growth, on-premises data center capacity is receiving a boost thanks to genAI applications and GPU infrastructure. “While most enterprise workloads are gravitating towards cloud providers or to off-premise colo facilities, a substantial subset are staying on-premise, driving a substantial increase in enterprise GPU servers,” said John Dinsdale, a chief analyst at Synergy Research Group.

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Oracle inks $30 billion cloud deal, continuing its strong push into AI infrastructure.

He pointed out that, in addition to its continued growth, OCI has a remaining performance obligation (RPO) — total future revenue expected from contracts not yet reported as revenue — of $138 billion, a 41% increase, year over year. The company is benefiting from the immense demand for cloud computing largely driven by AI models. While traditionally an enterprise resource planning (ERP) company, Oracle launched OCI in 2016 and has been strategically investing in AI and data center infrastructure that can support gigawatts of capacity. Notably, it is a partner in the $500 billion SoftBank-backed Stargate project, along with OpenAI, Arm, Microsoft, and Nvidia, that will build out data center infrastructure in the US. Along with that, the company is reportedly spending about $40 billion on Nvidia chips for a massive new data center in Abilene, Texas, that will serve as Stargate’s first location in the country. Further, the company has signaled its plans to significantly increase its investment in Abu Dhabi to grow out its cloud and AI offerings in the UAE; has partnered with IBM to advance agentic AI; has launched more than 50 genAI use cases with Cohere; and is a key provider for ByteDance, which has said it plans to invest $20 billion in global cloud infrastructure this year, notably in Johor, Malaysia. Ellison’s plan: dominate the cloud world CTO and co-founder Larry Ellison announced in a recent earnings call Oracle’s intent to become No. 1 in cloud databases, cloud applications, and the construction and operation of cloud data centers. He said Oracle is uniquely positioned because it has so much enterprise data stored in its databases. He also highlighted the company’s flexible multi-cloud strategy and said that the latest version of its database, Oracle 23ai, is specifically tailored to the needs of AI workloads. Oracle

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Datacenter industry calls for investment after EU issues water consumption warning

CISPE’s response to the European Commission’s report warns that the resulting regulatory uncertainty could hurt the region’s economy. “Imposing new, standalone water regulations could increase costs, create regulatory fragmentation, and deter investment. This risks shifting infrastructure outside the EU, undermining both sustainability and sovereignty goals,” CISPE said in its latest policy recommendation, Advancing water resilience through digital innovation and responsible stewardship. “Such regulatory uncertainty could also reduce Europe’s attractiveness for climate-neutral infrastructure investment at a time when other regions offer clear and stable frameworks for green data growth,” it added. CISPE’s recommendations are a mix of regulatory harmonization, increased investment, and technological improvement. Currently, water reuse regulation is directed towards agriculture. Updated regulation across the bloc would encourage more efficient use of water in industrial settings such as datacenters, the asosciation said. At the same time, countries struggling with limited public sector budgets are not investing enough in water infrastructure. This could only be addressed by tapping new investment by encouraging formal public-private partnerships (PPPs), it suggested: “Such a framework would enable the development of sustainable financing models that harness private sector innovation and capital, while ensuring robust public oversight and accountability.” Nevertheless, better water management would also require real-time data gathered through networks of IoT sensors coupled to AI analytics and prediction systems. To that end, cloud datacenters were less a drain on water resources than part of the answer: “A cloud-based approach would allow water utilities and industrial users to centralize data collection, automate operational processes, and leverage machine learning algorithms for improved decision-making,” argued CISPE.

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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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