Energy expansion meets pipelines, courts and corruption claims
US drilling activity is rising, but a New Mexico pipeline delay, Kazakhstan’s Kashagan claim and South Africa’s Shell ruling show how schedules, courts and governance can constrain energy investment.
Economics & Markets··Morning
US rig count hits its highest since March 2025
US oilfield activity continued to rebuild. According to the Baker Hughes count published on Friday, the total US oil and gas rig count rose by five to 593 in the week to 14 August, its highest since March 2025 and 54 rigs, or 10 per cent, above the same week a year earlier. Oil rigs rose by one to 455, the most since May 2025, and gas rigs rose by four to 128, the most since May 2026, while other rigs held at 10. That expansion signal on the drilling pad sits beside separate constraints on projects that need firm infrastructure, courts or clear title to proceeds, rather than only more steel in the ground.[1]
A six-month Green Chile slip squeezes Project Jupiter
Infrastructure timing became the binding constraint for one large power-hungry plan. Transwestern Pipeline, an Energy Transfer subsidiary, pushed the in-service date of its Green Chile project from 15 August to 1 February 2027 in a regulatory filing on Friday, a six-month slip that threatens the schedule for Project Jupiter, Oracle's 165 billion dollar data centre plan in New Mexico. The Doña Ana County site could draw as much as 2.5 gigawatts from gas-fired fuel cells supplied by Bloom Energy, while the Green Chile line is designed to carry up to 400 million cubic feet of gas a day to the site, roughly 0.4 per cent of total continental US gas production. Oracle told federal regulators in May that timing was critical. The filing therefore links a midstream calendar change directly to a hyperscale computing build that depends on firm gas supply rather than only on grid electricity.[2]
Kashagan arbitration and the Wild Coast ruling set legal limits
Legal and governance friction hit projects far from the US shale patch. Kazakhstan alleges in a confidential arbitration that the consortium developing the Kashagan field awarded about 12 contracts that carried unjustified cost increases or were compromised by bribery and self-dealing, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists reported on Friday; the contracts are worth 10.7 billion dollars. The consortium includes KazMunayGas alongside Eni, Shell, ExxonMobil, TotalEnergies, CNPC and INPEX. The claim is registered with the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague and the tribunal has yet to rule; it forms part of a wider 160 billion dollar claim by Kazakhstan over lost production, profits and environmental damage. In South Africa, the Constitutional Court on Friday set aside a 2024 Supreme Court of Appeal ruling that had left open a path for Shell and Impact Africa to run seismic surveys off the east coast under an exploration right dating from 2014. Local communities and environmental groups had challenged the plans partly on inadequate consultation, and Justice Jody Kollapen said the appeal order was set aside. Shell said it remains committed to responsible offshore exploration and stakeholder engagement, and last year received environmental authorisation for as many as five ultra-deepwater wells in the Northern Cape Ultra Deep Block of the Orange Basin that reaches into Namibia. Across these files, rising US rig counts sit next to a delayed gas pipeline, an unresolved multi-billion-dollar arbitration and a top-court block on seismic work, showing how schedules, courts and governance claims can constrain energy investment even when drilling activity is rising.[3], [4], [1], [2]
