Exploration spend trends and future ramp

We are pleased to share the final episode of our NAPE COBT series featuring Ruaraidh Montgomery, Head of Energy Trends & Analytics at Welligence Energy Analytics, to discuss the latest developments in global exploration trends. Prior to joining Welligence, Ruaraidh spent 13 years at Wood Mackenzie covering Latin America’s upstream and corporate sectors as well as the U.S. Gulf. At Welligence, he oversees all global upstream research. Welligence is a market intelligence firm exclusively focused on upstream oil and gas. Its platform provides tools and intelligence to assess opportunities, benchmark against peers, visualize upstream data, and access detailed asset valuations, among other capabilities. We were pleased to hear Ruaraidh’s insights.
 
In our conversation, Ruaraidh walks us through how the Welligence platform combines high-quality data acquisition with on-the-ground human intelligence to model global upstream activity and identify emerging opportunities. He outlines Welligence’s outlook for international exploration, noting that while 2026 activity is likely to remain relatively flat, a more meaningful pickup is expected in 2027–2029 as recently assembled exploration portfolios mature into drill-ready prospects. We discuss why exploration is structurally needed to support supply into the 2030s, and how majors and large independents are rebuilding exploration through bid rounds, farm-ins, and direct partnerships with national oil companies (NOCs). He describes a growing “land grab” for acreage across key regions including the Atlantic Margin, Brazil’s equatorial margin, the East Mediterranean, the Black Sea/Turkey, Greece, Libya, and parts of North Africa. We highlight Alaska’s Nanushuk play as a powerful example of how reprocessed seismic can unlock new stratigraphic potential in mature basins. We touch on host governments making fiscal terms more competitive to attract capital and the growing importance of above-ground dynamics, using Venezuela as an example of a potential monetization pathway for existing offshore gas via Trinidad’s infrastructure and Atlantic LNG. We cover how operators think about securing development capacity as activity rises, the opportunity to reprocess and upgrade seismic using AI to shorten the cycle from data to leads and prospects, the emerging interest in international shale, and the logic of pursuing first-mover advantage. We also discuss producing-country NOCs expanding internationally (notably QatarEnergy and ADNOC/XRG), Petrobras re-entering international exploration, Russia and Iran as geopolitical variables, Murphy’s Vietnam success as a mid-cap case study, how Welligence is using AI across modeling and intelligence workflows, and more. Ruaraidh’s slides from the discussion are linked here. Thanks to Ruaraidh for joining!

Mike Bradley started off the discussion by noting that the 10-year U.S. bond yield has done essentially nothing this week (stuck between 4.0% to 4.10%), largely due to a lack of market-moving economic data. In crude markets, WTI finally broke out of its $60–$65/bbl price range for the first time since August 2024. Growing doubts around the prospects for an Iranian nuclear agreement have pushed oil prices higher this week, though any agreement reached in the coming weeks could just as easily push WTI price back to the lower end of its recent trading band. He also pointed to the strength (backwardation) in global oil prices, despite the IEA’s persistent narrative that global oil markets in 2026 will be oversupplied by ~3.7mmbpd, which Mike deemed completely ridiculous. In broader equities, the DJIA and S&P 500 were both down marginally. The Energy sector has benefitted this week from the move higher in oil prices and remains the best-performing S&P sector this year (up ~23%)