Malaysia’s Petroliam Nasional Berhad (Petronas) has posted revenues of MYR 132.6 billion ($31.4 billion) for the first half of 2025, versus $41 billion for H1 2024. The company, in its report, attributed the decline to discontinued operations from the Engen Group divestment in May 2024, as well as unfavorable foreign exchange. Petronas also cited lower average realized prices from petroleum products, crude oil, and condensates following the downward trend in benchmark prices. Profit after tax was $6.2 billion, dropping 19 percent from H1 2024. EBITDA totaled $12.8 billion, lower by 15 percent in line with lower profits, Petronas said. “Petronas remains unwavering in our commitment to strengthen our business and portfolio resilience for long-term growth amid an increasingly challenging macro environment in the first half of 2025”, Muhammad Taufik, Petronas President and Group CEO. “Through the focused execution of our Energy Transition Strategy, portfolio optimization and prudent capital management, we are expediting a critical transformation to continue delivering energy safely, reliably and sustainably to those we serve”. Petronas said it expects oil prices to remain low due to ongoing geopolitical tensions, uncertainties in the macroeconomic landscape, changing regulatory conditions, and the swift reversal of OPEC+ production cuts, which will continually alter global energy dynamics and trade patterns. Petronas said it is focusing on providing advantaged hydrocarbons with reduced costs and emissions. This initiative is supported by numerous upstream discoveries and developments, especially in Malaysia, Suriname, Indonesia, and Angola, it said. The inaugural liquefied natural gas cargo from the LNG Canada facility also marked a strategic expansion of Petronas’ supply footprint. Petronas said it is enhancing its integrated low-carbon value chain through focused investments in solar energy and energy solutions hubs. To contact the author, email [email protected] What do you think? We’d love to hear from you, join the conversation on the Rigzone

TotalEnergies SE has received two exploration permits offshore Nigeria and one offshore Republic of the Congo, growing its footprint in the two countries. The Nzombo exploration license sits 100 kilometers (62.14 miles) off the coast of Pointe-Noire, near the Moho production facilities operated by TotalEnergies EP Congo. The block spans 1,000 square kilometers (386.1 square miles), according to the French energy giant. “The work program includes the drilling of one exploration well, which is expected to spud before the end of 2025”, TotalEnergies said in a statement on its website. “This award of a promising exploration permit, with the material Nzombo prospect, reflects our continued strategy of expanding our exploration portfolio with high-impact prospects, which can be developed leveraging our existing facilities, and confirms our longstanding partnership with the Republic of the Congo”, said Kevin McLachlan, senior vice president for exploration at TotalEnergies. In the new block TotalEnergies is operator with a 50 percent stake. QatarEnergy and national oil company SNPC own 35 percent and 15 percent respectively. Meanwhile for the new Nigerian awards, TotalEnergies and local player South Atlantic Petroleum Ltd. (SAPETRO) signed a production sharing contract (PSC) containing PPLs 2000 and 2001, TotalEnergies said Tuesday. The West African country awarded the permits under its 2024 exploration bidding. TotalEnergies is operator with an 80 percent stake while SAPETRO owns 20 percent. Located in the “prolific” West Delta basin, the two permits cover about 2,000 square kilometers (772.2 square miles), TotalEnergies said. “The work program includes drilling one firm exploration well”, it said. “TotalEnergies is honored to be the first international company to be awarded exploration licenses in a bid round in Nigeria in more than a decade, marking a new milestone in our long-term partnership with the country”, said McLachlan. “These promising block captures are fully aligned with our strategy of strengthening

The U.S. Department of Transportation is withdrawing or terminating $679 million in funding for 12 port and infrastructure upgrades that would support offshore wind projects, it announced Friday. “As part of the Department of Transportation’s review of all discretionary grant programs with obligated and unobligated projects, USDOT identified 12 offshore wind grants and project selections that were not aligned with the goals and priorities of the administration,” the department said in a release. The defunded projects include the Sparrows Point Steel Marshalling Port Project, which had been awarded $47.3 million in Port Infrastructure Development Program; the Arthur Kill Terminal, an offshore wind port in New York, which had been allocated $48 million in PIDP funding; and the Humboldt Bay Offshore Wind Heavy Lift Multipurpose Marine Terminal, which had been allocated $426.7 million in Nationally Significant Freight and Highway Projects funding. The department’s release said the Trump administration has “refocused” DOT and its Maritime Administration “on rebuilding America’s shipbuilding capacity, unleashing more reliable, traditional forms of energy, and utilizing the nation’s bountiful natural resources to unleash American energy.” “Where possible, funding from these projects will be recompeted to address critical port upgrades and other core infrastructure needs of the United States,” DOT said. This funding clawback is the latest in a series of moves from President Donald Trump to reverse course on federal support for offshore wind. Last month the U.S. Department of Commerce opened a probe into wind turbine imports, setting the stage for new tariffs, and it rescinded all “wind energy areas” the Biden administration had designated for future lease sales on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf. Also last month, the Department of the Interior issued a stop work order to the 700-MW Revolution Wind project and said in court that it intends to revoke the approved construction and operations plan

President Donald Trump said India offered to cut tariffs, while New Delhi signaled it’s continuing to negotiate a trade agreement with the US, indicating both sides are keeping the door open to resolving tensions.  Trump said in a social media post on Monday that India offered to reduce its tariffs on US goods to zero, without saying when the concession was made. He added that “it’s getting late” and India should have made the offer “years ago.”  India’s government hasn’t officially responded to Trump’s remarks, but Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal said at an event on Tuesday that both sides continue to engage to reach a trade agreement. “We are in dialog with the US for a bilateral trade agreement,” Goyal said in New Delhi.  There are no formal talks taking place between the trade negotiators at the moment after a US team canceled its trip to India in August. Bloomberg News reported last week that the two nations are keeping informal communication channels open. Trump’s latest post may signal that the US remains open to trade talks, according to Abhijit Das, a former Indian trade official and author on trade matters. “This is his attempt to walk back on his earlier hardened stance on India,” he said. Trump slapped India with 50% tariffs on exports to the US to penalize it for its trade barriers and its purchases of Russian oil. India was among the first countries to open trade talks with the Trump administration, with the US president and Prime Minister Narendra Modi committing to a bilateral deal by the fall of this year. The two sides failed to clinch a deal after five rounds of talks, with the US getting increasingly frustrated with New Delhi’s unwillingness to budge on key issues, such as opening up its dairy and agriculture markets. Trump later

Oil edged up by the most since late July as technical buying supported a rally driven by signs of enduring physical market tightness. West Texas Intermediate rose 2.5% to settle near $66 a barrel. Ukraine struck two oil refineries in Russia in a continued assault on energy infrastructure that has begun to hurt flows, pushing Moscow’s crude-processing runs to the lowest since May 2022 last month. The conflict has contributed to unforeseen tightness in a market that was expected to be overwhelmed by OPEC crude at this time of year. Commodity trading advisers, meanwhile, were steadily buying throughout the session, helping push prices higher, according to Daniel Ghali, a commodity strategist at TD Securities. However, the algorithmically driven traders will sell both benchmarks in any scenario for prices over the coming week, indicating that crude’s run may reverse soon, he said. Russian flows have been in the spotlight over the past few weeks amid US efforts to pressure Moscow to make peace in Ukraine by targeting India, a top importer of its crude. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Washington would look at sanctions on Russia this week. Elsewhere, US stockpiles have remained low at the key storage hub of Cushing, Oklahoma. The wealth of bullish near-term factors — from the war in Ukraine to the US deploying naval forces off the coast of Venezuela — contributed to timespreads widening in their backwardated structures toward the end of last week. “Sentiment in the oil market is shifting from very negative to more neutral,” said Arne Lohmann Rasmussen, chief analyst at A/S Global Risk Management. “The main support for oil prices is the geopolitical premium. No one believes anymore that a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine is imminent.” The jolt of strength comes amid a bearish chapter for crude. US benchmark

The Northern Lights Joint Venture, comprised of Equinor, Shell plc, and TotalEnergies, has injected and stored the first volumes of CO2 into the reservoir 2.6 m under the seabed and 100 km off the coast of Western Norway. The CO2 is transported from Heidelberg Materials’ cement factory in Brevik  to Øygarden via two 130-m-long vessels (Northern Pathfinder and Northern Pioneer) designed by Shell engineers. The liquefied-carbon carriers are each capable of transporting 7,500 cu m of CO2 in a single trip, according to Shell. The CO2 is then offloaded and transported through a 100-km pipeline and injected into the Aurora reservoir. Heidelberg Materials is expected to capture around 400,000 tonnes/year (tpy) of CO2 from its cement factory in Brevik, two hours south of Oslo, accounting for about half the plant’s total emissions, according to Shell.  Equinor, as the Technical Service Provider (TSP), has been responsible for the construction of the Øygarden receiving infrastructure and the offshore infrastructure on behalf of the joint venture. Equinor also will have operational responsibility of the CO2 plant. The start of CO2 injection completes the first phase of the development, which has a total capacity of 1.5 million tpy of CO2. The project’s industrial customers include Hafslund Celsio and Heidelberg Materials in Norway, Yara in the Netherlands, and Ørsted in Denmark. In March, the owners of Northern Lights made the final investment decision for Phase 2 of the development, which will increase transport and storage capacity to a minimum of 5 million tpy of CO2 from 2028. FID for Phase 2 followed the signing of an agreement to transport and store up to 900,000 tonnes/year of CO2 from Stockholm Exergi.  The expansion of Northern Lights builds on existing infrastructure and includes additional onshore storage tanks, a new jetty, and additional injection wells. Development of the second