Insight
Global Upstream Update: September 2026
*Please note that this report only includes an Excel data file if this is indicated in "What's included" below
Report summary
The Global Upstream Update is a regular Insight produced for global clients. This edition includes: US–Venezuela deal: separates near-term recovery from longer-cycle heavy-oil growth. Positive results from past well reactivations offer optimism, but pilot projects are key. Vostok’s soft launch: a big step forward for this last-of-a-kind megaproject, which carries a 2 million b/d target. But multi-year delays and sanctions constraints will continue to limit material exports until the 2030s. Egypt's fresh start: with receivables now cleared, two bid rounds have been launched and M&A competition has returned. But a return to exports needs bigger, costlier projects. Dorra advances: four EPCI packages for the ~US$13 billion Partitioned-Zone gas project have been awarded despite Iran's territorial claim. Dorra is a critical lever in cutting Kuwait's LNG imports
Table of contents
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Executive summary themes
- 1. Novel resource capture models
- 2. Growth, but with caveats
- 3. Confronting tougher challenges
- Discovery to payback: what separates frontier winners?
- Middle East: progress on UAE tight oil / Dorra gas / Syria despite tensions
- North Africa: Egypt’s bid rounds / private Middle Eastern investors enter DROs
- US Lower 48:Permian capital allocation challenges as Waha prices improve
- Canada: the response to divergent oil and gas price trajectories
- Gulf of America: standout Miocene wells skew play economics
- Latin America: the oil agreement between Venezuela and the US
- Asia-Pacific: regulatory landscape shifts to get projects moving
- Sub-Saharan Africa: Mozambique’s LNG inflection
- Russia: Vostok start-up and rescued revenue growth
- Caspian: a resource conundrum
- 4 more item(s)...
Tables and charts
This report includes the following images and tables:
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Frontier exploration can deliver transformational discoveriesOil is commercial on discovery; gas must find a marketFrontier full-cycle value is won or lost before FID
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EOG sets a high benchmark in global unconventional explorationKuwait and Saudi push ahead with Dorra gas project despite geopolitical risksInternational operators are returning to Syria’s upstream sectorEgypt launches first bid rounds since clearing receivables owed to investorsPrivate Middle Eastern investors enter discovered resource opportunities (DROs)New Permian egress lifts gas prices over US$2/mcfThere’s a Waha price where gas returns outcompetes oil, but it’s a high oneThe divergent trajectories of Canada’s oil and gas benchmarks in 2026Contrasting Canada’s oil and gas-weighted earnings and investor returns
- 22 more item(s)...
What's included
This report contains:
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