Italian major ENI says it has inked an agreement to create a joint venture with Mercuria, one of the world top trading firms.
The venture is aimed at overseeing energy commodities trading activities across global energy markets.
The joint venture, equally owned by the two companies, “will operate on an independent and unconsolidated basis through a holding structure with international trading hubs, ensuring a truly global operational footprint.
“It will cover certain commercialization and trading activities including, but not limited to, commodities such as oil, biofuels, gas, LNG and related logistics and infrastructure rights”, ENI explains in a statement.
“The strategic rationale of this joint venture is to expand our trading footprint, enhance profitability for both partners, and generate long-term value through operational efficiency and robust risk management ” says Stefano Pujatti, Director of Global Trading at ENI.
”By integrating physical energy flows with world-class trading, logistics and risk management capabilities, we will create a more agile and efficient platform that maximizes value across the supply chain”, concurs Marco Dunand, Chief Executive Officer of Mercuria. “Together we will be better positioned to serve customers, optimize assets and navigate increasingly dynamic global energy markets.”
Italian explorer ENI has announced that its newly launched supercomputing system, HPC7 (High Performance Computing – HPC), is the world’s most powerful High-Performance Computer for industrial use.
“HPC7 thus surpasses HPC6, launched in November 2024, which has in turn confirmed its position within the TOP10, ranking 8th in the TOP500 list”.
HPC7 has a capacity of over 861 PFlops/s and it ranks 6th overall in the new TOP500 global ranking, and second supercomputer in Europe. It includes 3,480 compute nodes, incorporating a total of 13,920 GPUs. It has achieved a peak performance of over 861 PFlops (Rpeak) and over 571 PFlops sustained (Rmax), positioning it among the most advanced infrastructures in the world.
Both supercomputers are in a dedicated area of ENI’s Green Data Centre, benefiting from an infrastructure designed to combine operational efficiency with environmental sustainability. The strength of the Green Data Centre is enhanced by an innovative liquid cooling system, which employs direct liquid cooling (DLC) technology, capable of dissipating 96% of the generated heat. The system has a maximum power absorption of 9.4 MW (including cooling and supporting systems), achieving an efficiency of 65.426 GFlops/W.
“The combination of the HPC6 and HPC7 computing systems exceeds the Exascale threshold. Together, HPC6 and HPC7 can deliver over 1 Exaflop/s (1 Exaflop/s = 1000 PFlops/s), equivalent to more than 1Billion Billion complex mathematical operations per second. The achievement of Exascale-class performance by ENI’s supercomputing system represents the attainment of the most advanced and extraordinary technological frontier in the world of supercomputing and confirms the company’s leadership in the sector”, ENI brags in a release.
“The launch of HPC7 marks a key milestone in ENI’s strategy to enhance energy resources and decarbonization, within a model where technology is a central element of innovation, capable of supporting growth, efficiency and competitiveness in both traditional and transition businesses.
“In this context, advanced computing and HPC systems are confirmed as central to ENI, enabling the integration and enhancement of expertise and applications across the entire value chain: from subsurface understanding to the optimization of industrial plant operations, as well as improving the accuracy of geological and fluid dynamics studies for CO₂ storage and the development of advanced energy technologies.
“Supercomputing also contributes to accelerating the evolution of key innovation drivers, supporting the efficiency of emerging value chains – such as biofuels – and the simulation of complex phenomena, including plasma behaviour in magnetic confinement fusion”.
HPC7 is based on an architecture leveraging the same technology that underpins the most powerful systems currently available in Europe and worldwide, combining CPUs and GPUs in a hybrid configuration, with over 3,400 computing nodes and nearly 14,000 GPUs, to maximize computational performance and energy efficiency.
ENI says that HPC establishes itself as a crucial enabler for the internal development of artificial intelligence use cases in support of ENI’s businesses.
“This technological ecosystem also represents a distinctive value for ENI, as it can attract new initiatives and talents from outside the company, as already demonstrated with HPC6 through the Call4Innovators.
“In detail, ENI’s new HPC system allows to add HPC6’s 477 PFlops/s sustained to HPC7’s 571 PFlops/s, corresponding to peak performance values of 606 PFlops/s for the former and 861 PFlops/s for the latter.
“The combined computing power of HPC6 and HPC7 reaches 1048 PFlop/s sustained and 1467 PFlop/ peak”.
With a value of 65.426 GFlops/W, HPC7 also achieved an excellent position in the dedicated Green500 ranking—which measures system efficiency—placing 11th worldwide and ranking first among peer systems in its category.
Itaian contractor Saipem has been awarded a new offshore contract by Azule Energy for transportation and installation (T&I) services in support of the Greater PAJ project, offshore Angola. The contract, with duration of around 40 months, is worth $1Billion.
Saipem’s scope of work entails the engineering, fabrication, transportation and installation of approximately 180 kilometers of rigid pipelines and subsea facilities, at a water depth reaching up to 2,000 meters. The contract also includes the transportation and installation of 38km of flexible flowlines and jumpers and 54 km of umbilicals.
Fabrication activities will be carried out at Saipem’s Ambriz yard in Angola, with the involvement of local companies and workforce. For the offshore installation campaign, Saipem plans to deploy its construction vessels FDS and Castorone.
The Greater PAJ project is a $5.1Billion deepwater offshore oil development in Angola’s Lower Congo Basin. It is the country’s first integrated cross-block development, tying together five offshore fields (Palas, Astraea, Juno, Urano, and Dione) across Blocks 31 and 31/21.The reservoirs in the areas involved hold a total estimated reserve of 252Million barrels of oil, according to ENI.
The project involves drilling 17 wells tied back to a new Floating Production, Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessel, which will have a capacity to produce 95,000 barrels of oil per day and export 70Millon standard cubic feet of gas per day. Partners: with Azule Energy, the project’s operator, include Norway’s Equinor, Angola’s state-owned Sonangol E&P, and the Angolan oil and gas agency The Final Investment Decision (FID) was officially greenlit on June 22, 2026 with first oil expected in the first half of 2029.
“The Greater PAJ project, represents one of the most significant ultra-deepwater developments in sub-Saharan Africa” Saipem enthuss in a press release announcing the award.
Azule Energy is an incorporated joint venture owned by the Italian major ENI and the British giant bp.
When I wrote at the start of this year about the quiet repricing of Nigeria’s energy market, the core of my argument was about capital. Custodians of capital had begun to take long-term, risk-based positions in complex assets, and credible exits were finally happening in value-generating, non-distressed upstream assets. Heirs Energies buying Maurel and Prom’s 20.07% stake in Seplat Energy for about $500Million was one of the two transactions I used to make the point.
Six months on, the story has moved from capital to control. From control to governance.
This is really a story about two companies, not one. Seplat is going deep, scaling its upstream and gas toward the weight of a major and edging toward deepwater. Aradel Holdings is going wide, the most vertically integrated operator we have, wellhead to refinery to NLNG cargo. Seplat comes first here because its boardroom made the news, but the two roads matter most read side by side.
Control Creating Governance
Seplat has announced that Tony Elumelu will become Chairman on the first of January, 2027, taking over from Senator Udoma Udo Udoma, who retires on December 31, 2026. Effiong Okon becomes Chief Executive Officer on August 1, 2026, succeeding Roger Brown after 13 years at Seplat, the last six as chief executive. Elumelu had already joined the board as a non-executive director in January 2026, weeks after Heirs became the single largest shareholder. The sequencing is deliberate. Capital first, board familiarity next, then the chair.
This is the logical second act of my repricing thesis. A 20.07% interest financed off African balance sheets was never going to sit quietly as passive money. It was always going to express itself through governance, converting ownership concentration into strategic direction under a controlled, well-signalled transition.
The Asset Base Now In Play
Seplat made history in 2010 as the first Nigerian company to buy and operate producing assets from an international oil company, taking Shell’s interest in a cluster of blocks located onshore western Niger Delta basin. Those assets, with the Oben and Sapele gas plants and the ANOH joint venture that reached first gas in January 2026, made it a leading indigenous gas and power supplier.
Then came the larger move. In December 2024 Seplat bought Mobil Producing Nigeria Unlimited from ExxonMobil for about $800Million. The detail that matters is what ExxonMobil kept. This was a shallow water sale. The major held on to its deepwater. Seplat more than doubled its production to about 131,500 barrels of oil equivalent (BOE) a day, but every barrel of it sits in shallow water or onshore.
The immediate prize now sits inside the portfolio Seplat already owns. Its Roadmap 2030, set last September, targets 200,000BOEPD by the end of the decade, $5 to $6Billion of cumulative cash flow and a capital programme of up to $3Billion. Delivering it needs two things the new structure supplies: Elumelu’s reach into capital, across UBA, the development finance institutions and the markets, and a chief executive who has actually built and run complex projects.
The Next Horizon Is Deepwater
Here’s where my own view comes in. Once that base is optimised, the next horizon of growth for Seplat is the deepwater.
Deepwater is the final frontier for Nigerian operators, the place you move beyond marginal fields, onshore and shallow water into single, integrated projects with capital expenditure in the billions. It’s also, tellingly, the ground the majors have been least willing to give up. ExxonMobil sold Seplat its shallow water and onshore business and deliberately kept its Nigerian deepwater, its interests in Erha, Usan, Bonga and Owowo. The frontier sits open because the majors held onto it.
No indigenous Nigerian company has yet taken a deepwater final investment decision as operator. I can’t blame them. They aren’t finished with even a third of the onshore and shallow-water opportunity. Whoever crosses that line first will redefine what a Nigerian operator can be, and for Seplat it would mean a fresh, multi-billion-dollar commitment, by farm-in when a major sells down, or a partnered greenfield entry.
Which is why Effiong Okon as incoming chief executive matters. He cut his teeth at Shell, ran deepwater production on the Bonga field, the very asset class Seplat doesn’t yet own, and then delivered the politically and commercially complex ANOH project to first gas. That’s precisely the profile a deepwater ambition demands.
Aradel And The Other Road To Scale
On the narrow question of integration, the crown today belongs to Aradel Holdings.
Aradel is, without a doubt, the most vertically integrated indigenous energy company in the country. From its flagship Ogbele field, taken as Nigeria’s first marginal field farm-out in 2000, it runs a flow station, a 100Million standard cubic feet per day (MMscf/d) gas plant and an 11,000 barrels a day modular refinery, the first private one in Nigeria, now turning out around a million litres of diesel, kerosene and naphtha a day with petrol next. It was the first independent to sell non-JV gas into Bonny NLNG, back in 2012, and its Oil Mining Lease (OML) 34 gas feeds the West African Gas Pipeline that carries molecules on to Benin, Togo and Ghana. Wellhead to pump, molecule to NLNG cargo, Aradel runs the full chain.
It has scaled on the back of the majors leaving. Through ND Western and the Renaissance consortium it sits on the onshore acreage Shell exited in the SPDC sale, worth up to $2.4Billion, the $1.3Billion headline price plus up to $1.1billion for prior receivables and cash balances, feeding NLNG with billions of cubic feet a day of natural gas. At the end of 2025 it took majority control of both vehicles.
So Seplat isn’t chasing Aradel. They’re running different races. Aradel has gone wide, integrated across the whole chain from wellhead to refinery to NLNG cargo. Seplat has gone deep, concentrated in upstream and gas, with no refinery and no plan to pump petrol, its integration running from upstream into gas, processing and power, and in my view it must reach deepwater within 15 years. One firm is the closest we have to a complete national energy chain. The other is the closest thing we have to an indigenous major in the upstream and gas mould Shell once owned.
Why Nigeria Needs Them To Win
Aradel may own the integration crown, but Seplat is now in the ripest position to scale into a major in upstream and gas, the closest we have to what Shell once was as the backbone of the Nigerian sector. It has the asset base, the talent, and now the leadership and governance to pursue that vision.
The case for both runs well beyond their own balance sheets. A large, well-run indigenous operator drags a long chain of the economy behind it. Banks like UBA, Access and Zenith build the muscle to finance energy onshore, as Afreximbank and the AFC did on the Heirs deal. Nigerian insurers carry risk that once went abroad. Engineers and geoscientists build world-class skill without leaving the country. Pension funds and savers own the wealth that foreigners used to repatriate. And cheaper, more reliable gas sets the cost base for every factory on the grid.
Put numbers on it. Seplat produced about 131,500BOEPD in 2025. Aradel reported about 23,000 in the first half, but that understates what’s coming, since its end-2025 consolidation of ND Western and Renaissance folds in a far larger slice of the old Shell onshore production, another 40,000 barrels of oil a day on some counts and a great deal of gas besides. Fully consolidated, the two are pushing past 200,000 boepd today, with Aradel’s share climbing fast.
Run it forward. Seplat’s Roadmap targets 200,000BOEPD by 2030, and Aradel, digesting Renaissance, can climb well beyond 150,000BOEPD. That’s comfortably over 300,000BOEPD between them in five years. Stretch to ten years, with a Seplat producing on its assets and developing a deepwater project and Aradel’s Renaissance interests fully worked, and the pair could deliver 500,000BOEPD or more by the mid-2030s. Set that against a country producing about 1.7Million barrels of crude a day and chasing 3Million. Two indigenous houses carrying half a million barrels of oil equivalent between them would be shouldering the load the majors once carried alone.
There is a bigger picture here. The majors are handing the onshore and shallow water to Nigerians and keeping only the deepwater, and what fills that vacuum is two distinct models the country needs both of. Aradel widening across the chain into refining, petrochemicals, LPG and power. Seplat climbing the upstream curve into deepwater while deepening gas into processing and if possible, LNG. With a decade of sound capital decisions and a fiscal and regulatory regime that stays still long enough to reward patient money, Nigeria ends up with two homegrown heavyweights at a scale the sector has never produced on its own.
Beyond any corporate intent behind these appointments, I believe Nigeria needs both Seplat and Aradel to do well. The architecture needed to achieve this is in place. The build-out is the hard part. The next decade will be truly exciting.
Afolabi Akinrogunde is a senior energy executive with over 20 years of experience across Nigeria’s oil, gas, power, and renewable energy sectors, working at the intersection of energy infrastructure investment, operations, strategy and policy. Views expressed are personal and do not represent the position of his employer.
BOURBON, the French subsea and marine services contractor, has been awarded a new multi-month contract for operations on the Jubilee field offshore Ghana.
The project involves the Multi-Purpose Support Vessel (MPSV) Bourbon Evolution 802, equipped with two work-class HD ROVs to deliver inspection, maintenance and repair (IMR) services on wellheads, cleaning of an FPSO’s mooring chains, survey operations, pipeline installation and X-tree installation.
The company calls it ‘a comprehensive scope of work’.
Operator Tullow Oil, the British junior, is currently busy on the Jubilee field, where six wells are expected onstream in 2026 (five producers and one water injector), two of which are already onstream (J74-P and J75-P). The next three producers are expected to come onstream later in June 2026 and July 2026, with the water injector due onstream September 2026.
BOURBON explains that around sixty people are currently on board Bourbon Evolution 802, to support the campaign, including representatives of Tulow Oil.
“Built for demanding subsea operations, the vessel combines surface support capabilities with deep-water intervention, enabling BOURBON to manage the full operational value chain”, the contractor says in a release.
Canadian Natural Resources (CNR) has recommenced crude oil production on the Baobab field in deepwaters off Côte d’Ivoire, after a major life extension and refurbishment campaign of the field’s Floating Production Storage Offloading (FPSO) facility.
Production resumed June 4, 2026, from four producing wells with the remaining three producers expected to come online shortly, stakeholders on the field say in separate press releases.
The FPSO arrived Ivorian waters from Dubai in early April, 2026, was moored into position and re-connected to the field infrastructure.
Phase 5 drilling programme on the field is expected to begin in the second half of 2026 and will feature four producers, two to three injectors and two workovers, providing potential meaningful additions to production from the main Baobab field, according to VAALCO, the US independent which holds 27.39% non-operated working interest (equivalent to a 30.43% paying interest).
MODEC, the Japanese Engineering, Procurement, Construction, and Installation contractor was responsible for the project execution of the life extension and refurbishment.
In February 2025, MODEC transferred ownership of the FPSO to CNR and concluded the charter contract. The FPSO was renamed “FPSO Baobab Ivoirien” upon the sale, and MODEC continues to provide operation and maintenance (O&M) services, currently scheduled through December 2026.
The Floating Production Storage and Offloading FPSO vessel named EMEM, which is to serve as production platform for Oriental Resources operated Okwok Field, is stuck in a seaway traffic jam between the UAE and Nigeria.
EMEM, on its way to the West African country, is held up in the logjam on the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway which has been sealed as a result of the Iran-American war.
The vessel, formerly known as the Nordic Mistral, was converted and constructed at the Drydocks World Dubai shipyardin Dubai, UAE into a fully integrated FPSO with a storage capacity of 1Million barrels. Development drilling is ongoing on the Okwok field in Nigeria, with first oil now less certain than the last scheduled timeline of April 2026.
Even before this hold up, Okwok field’s route to first oil had suffered significant delays. Recent timelines have included sailing to Nigerian waters, for hook up on the field beginning February 2025, with first oil is expected by July 1, 2025. That didn’t happen. Then in November 2025, Gbenga Komolafe, then Commission Chief Executive of the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC), visited the Dockyard where the construction was going on in Dubai, “ahead of final voyage to Nigeria”.
The fact that the vessel is held up is an indication it did not leave Dubai waters until February 28, 2026, when the Iran American war started. EMEMis a 40,000 Barrels Per Day (BOPD) capacity facility,. Okwok field is expected to deliver 30,000BOPD at peak.
Tony Elumelu is on the cards to become the next Chairman of Seplat Energy, one of Africa’s largest homegrown E&P companies.
He may take the non-executive role in April 2027, fifteen months after he joined the board as a non-executive director, if Udoma Udo Udoma, who formally became chairman in April 2024, elects retirement.
Elumelu, we learn, is being widely considered by members of the 14 man board.
If Elumelu becomes chairman, he will be the second representative of a large shareholding bloc, in Seplat’s 17-year history and 12 year post-listing period, to take the role.
The Nigerian independent, Petralon Energy, has announced the commencement of production on its second consecutive well, DI-3 on the Dawes Island field onshore eastern Niger Delta basin.
Production on the well commenced on March 14, 2026 “and has since delivered average additional daily production of approximately 2,800 barrels of oil per day (BOPD), bringing the field’s combined production capacity to approximately 4,800BOPD”, the company says in a release.
DI-3 builds directly on the performance of DI-2, which came onstream on October 18 2025. Together, the two wells represent a sustained, back-to-back drilling programme on a field that was non-producing at the time of Petralon’s acquisition in 2021.
“The company has to date exported over 350,000 barrels of oil from the field via the Bonny Oil and Gas Terminal, which lies about 30kilometres from the field. The DI-3 well was delivered with zero lost-time incidents, consistent with the company’s commitment to world-class health, safety and environmental standards across its operations”, Petralon gushes in the widely circulated release.
The Dawes Island field occupies roughly 46 square kilometres in a location sited approximately 15kilometres from Port Harcourt, he commercial heartland of Eastern Nigeria. The field “holds an estimated 17.6Million barrels of recoverable oil”, the company says. Petralon 54, the subsidiary of Petralon Energy which is working the asset, “holds a 100% working interest in the field, acquired in 2021”.
Ahonsi Unuigbe, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Petralon Energy, explains that the “success at Dawes Island was built on the conviction that Nigerians could acquire, develop, and operate world-class energy assets.
“That conviction once required courage; today, it stands on proof. The easy thing after DI-2 would have been to pause, but the determination and resilience of every single member of the Petralon team drove us forward, and DI-3 is the result of that effort. Progress like this is only possible through the strong collaboration we have built with our host communities, our regulator, and our partners. This is only the beginning of what Dawes Island can deliver.”
Egypt needs to increase its gas output by at least 1 Billion standard cubic feet per day (1Bscf/d), to drastically reduce the burgeoning importation of LNG forced on it by rapidly depleting reserves.
But the highest increments it can have in the next six months are 160Million standard cubic feet per day (MMscf/d) from Shell in the Mediterranean and 40MMscf/d inch up by Apache Corporation in the Western Desert. The two recent discoveries by ENI; Two Trillion cubic feet (2Tcf, reserves) in Denis W and the 330Billion cubic feet, in Bostan, are unlikely to get to the market before March 2027.
ENI’s more than 1 Tcf of gas discovery in Libya’s Bahr Essalam South-2 and South-3 structures “is one of North Africa’s most significant upstream gas stories so far this year”, Rystad says in a note, “but the target is to export it through Green stream pipeline to Italy”, the consultancy declares. It’s almost always about exports.
AFRICA’S DOMESTIC MARKET NEEDS to be supplied with far more than it currently does, but Nigerian Indies have returned to thinking big about small things. Platform Oil and Pillar Petroleum are expanding the Platform run gas processing plant and will increase evacuation by as much as 20MMscf/d into the public electricity system. Seplat/NGC owned AGPC facility is currently pumping 50MMscf/d to Indorama Petrochemical plant. The hope is that Renaissance Energy will be supplying the Dangote group with 200MMscf/d for its petrochemical projects by 2028 and that the Brass Methanol project should advance from the drawing board by 2027, ready to consume 200MMscf/d by 2031. Nigeria’s biggest gas-monetization project under construction is Sterling’s Petrochemical complex in Ikot Okwot in Akwa Ibom state in the south east Niger Delta. It should easily suck in 200MMscf/d to start with, and spit out 1.5Million Tonnes Per Annum (MMTPA) of fertiliser by 2028.
Export always beckons. Aradel Holdings is ready to pump 50MMscf/d into the minuscule Riverside LNG whenever the latter shows up. All of First E&Ps proposed 100MMscf/d by 2028 will be fed into the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) system.
Cote D’Ivoire is smart and lucky. Ghana, desperately wants to satisfy demand. But Tanzania and Cameroon are pushing away the pioneering builders of their domestic gas markets.
The big projects are “reserved” for delivering Africa’s molecules abroad. Nigeria’s 8MMTPA NLNG Train 7 is expected to come onstream in 2027. TOTAL has fully returned to work on the 13MMTPA Mozambique LNG; ENI is mulling a third 3.3MMTPA Floating LNG in the same country and there’s loud radio silence on the biggest of all: the 18MMTPA ExxonMobil operated Rovuma LNG.
The Africa Oil+Gas Report is the primer of the hydrocarbon industry on the continent. It is the market leader in local contextualizing of global developments and policy issues and is the go-to medium for decision makers, be they international corporations or local entrepreneurs, technical enterprises or financing institutions. Published by the Festac News Press Limited since 2001, AOGR is a paid subscription, monthly e-copy publication delivered around the world. Its website remains www.africaoilgasreport.com, and the contact email address is info@africaoilgasreport.com. Contact telephone numbers in the West African regional headquarters in Lagos are +2348124374087, +2348130733523, +2347062420127, +2348036525979, +2348023902519.
