Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2665 actions· ✨ 90 recent

President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. signed Executive Order No. 110 on March 24, 2026, declaring a one-year State of National Energy Emergency in response to Middle East supply disruptions, including potential closure of the Strait of Hormuz, that threaten petroleum import flows to the Philippines. The order activates the Unified Package for Livelihoods, Industry, Food, and Transport (UPLIFT), suspends normal procurement requirements for emergency energy acquisition, grants the Department of Energy (DOE) emergency fuel-import authority, and releases a ₱20 billion emergency fund to secure fuel supply. The emergency regime also mandates accelerated renewable-energy transition and promotion of EVs in public transport to reduce long-run import dependency.

On 12 March 2026 Senegal's Primature held a press conference releasing mid-term findings of the National Commission for the Re-evaluation and Renegotiation of Petroleum, Gas, and Mining Contracts, created in August 2024 under Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko's reform programme. The Commission identified a 1,075.9 billion FCFA shortfall in the mining sector — concentrated in unpaid taxes/royalties and unauthorised tax exemptions at ICS (Industries Chimiques du Sénégal) — and announced the termination of four offshore oil-exploration blocks (Djifer Offshore, Kayar Offshore, Saint-Louis Offshore, Rufisque Offshore). Renegotiation of the Greater Tortue Ahmeyim (GTA) gas project, operated by BP with Kosmos Energy and Woodside as partners on the Senegal-Mauritania maritime border, is under active examination; the Primature projects 900 bn FCFA in incremental fiscal revenue 2026-2040 from the contract revision programme. This is Senegal's first major instance of retroactive resource-contract review under the Sonko-Faye government and establishes the legal-political baseline for subsequent contract renegotiations across the 27 mining contracts and remaining hydrocarbon licences under Commission review.

On 13 February 2026 President Bola Ahmed Tinubu signed Executive Order No. 9 of 2026 directing all Production Sharing Contract operators and contractors to remit Royalty Oil, Tax Oil, Profit Oil, and Profit Gas directly to the Federation Account, bypassing prior NNPC Limited intermediated collection. The order simultaneously eliminates NNPC Limited's 30% management fee on profit oil/gas, suspends the 30% Frontier Exploration Fund deduction, and redirects Gas Flare Penalty proceeds to the Federation Account — materially walking back the fiscal architecture established under Petroleum Industry Act 2021 §§ 9 and 53. An Implementation Committee chaired by the Minister of Finance was established to operationalise the order and resolve disputes.

The Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2025 (Act No. 40 of 2025), receiving Royal Assent on 5 August 2025, reverses the April 2018 Ardern-government offshore petroleum exploration ban by removing the prohibition on new offshore exploration permits beyond onshore Taranaki, re-opening New Zealand's Taranaki, East Coast, and Deepwater basins to international oil and gas investors. The Act simultaneously amends the purpose of the Crown Minerals Act 1991 from "sustainably manage" to "promote" prospecting, exploration, and mining of Crown-owned minerals — a fundamental posture shift from conservation to production. Additional provisions restructure the decommissioning-liability regime by granting the Minister of Resources discretion to re-assign liability to former permit holders, extend the confidentiality period for speculative-prospecting data by six years, and introduce a new Tier 3 permit category for small-scale non-commercial gold mining.

Bangladesh's National Board of Revenue gazetted SRO 225-Ain/2025/48/Customs and SRO 226-Ain/2025/48/Customs on 29 May 2025, revising the minimum customs valuation (tariff-value) floors used to assess duty on a range of imported consumer and industrial goods, effective 2 June 2025. The amendment raised minimum import values for chocolate and cocoa-containing food preparations, removed the minimum-value floor for base oil used by petroleum processing/blending industries, and adjusted floors — mostly downward — for soap and other cleaning preparations and a handful of additional product lines. Minimum-value schemes set a customs-assessable price floor per unit regardless of the invoiced transaction value, so a higher floor functions as a de facto increase in the duty base (and hence landed cost) for under-invoicing-prone product categories, while a removed or lowered floor eases the duty base for the affected goods.

Papua New Guinea's National Parliament passed the National Petroleum Authority Act 2025 on 12 March 2025 (vote 84–0), establishing the National Petroleum Authority (NPA) as a new statutory regulator replacing the Department of Petroleum and Energy. The companion Oil and Gas (Amendment) Act 2025 was passed the same week, realigning the Oil and Gas Act 1998 licensing framework with NPA oversight. Both Acts commenced on 9 April 2025 via Notice in the National Gazette. A new 0.5% gross-revenue levy on crude oil, natural gas, LNG, condensates, and LPG applies to all Petroleum Production Licence holders, directly affecting ExxonMobil's PNG LNG (8.3 Mtpa), TotalEnergies' Papua LNG (4 Mtpa, FID expected 2026–27), and Santos' legacy Oil Search holdings.

Angola's National Assembly enacted Law No. 8/24 on 3 July 2024, establishing graduated criminal penalties for illegal mining activity involving strategic minerals as defined in the Mining Code. The law creates imprisonment terms of 3–8 years for promoting or facilitating illegal operations, 2–8 years for installing unlicensed equipment or initiating unauthorised mining, and 2–6 years for transporting illegally-mined minerals, alongside a forfeiture mechanism enabling the State to seize instruments, products, and proceeds of crime. The measure closes a gap in Angola's prior Mining Code (Law 31/11 of 2011), which lacked standalone criminal-enforcement provisions for strategic-minerals protection. A companion instrument, Presidential Order No. 39/24 of 26 January 2024, established the National Observatory to Combat Illegal Exploitation of Strategic Mineral Resources as the coordinating enforcement body.

Russian Government Resolution No. 506 of 29 March 2022, signed by Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and effective 30 March 2022, authorises the Ministry of Industry and Trade (Minpromtorg) to designate categories of goods exempt from articles 1252(4), 1359(6) and 1487 of the Russian Civil Code on national/regional exhaustion of trademark and other intellectual- property rights. Followed by Minpromtorg Order No. 1532 of 19 April 2022 publishing an initial list of 55 goods categories and named brands — including pharmaceuticals, electronics, automotive parts, mineral fuels, industrial chemicals, paper, textiles, base metals, and consumer goods — for which parallel (grey-market) imports without IP-holder consent are legalised. Designed as a sanctions-circumvention and supply-substitution instrument after the Western corporate exodus of March 2022; extended annually and most recently re-authorised through 31 December 2026.

On 27 December 2017 President Nursultan Nazarbayev signed Code No. 125-VI ZRK "On Subsoil and Subsoil Use," a wholesale recodification replacing the 2010 Subsoil Use Law that entered into force on 29 June 2018 (with certain provisions deferred to 1 January 2019). The Code establishes the licensing architecture for all mineral extraction in Kazakhstan — the world's leading uranium producer (~40% of global U₃O₈ output, ~22,000 tU/yr) and a top-11 oil exporter (~1.8 mbpd) — covering solid minerals, hydrocarbons, and uranium under a single codified framework. For solid minerals the Code introduces a liberalised "first-come first-served" auction-free licence model for non-strategic deposits and a state-tender model for strategic deposits, alongside subsoil-use rights transfer and pledge provisions governing all M&A in the sector. For uranium the Code codifies the National Atomic Company Kazatomprom's statutory role as state operator over all uranium blocks, with government priority pre-emption rights and mandatory Kazatomprom participation in all production licences. For hydrocarbons the Code establishes the concession and production-sharing framework governing the pre-salt Caspian mega-projects (Tengiz, Karachaganak, Kashagan) and the model contract architecture for petroleum products. Horizontal obligations — local Kazakh-content procurement floors, social-package requirements, and environmental-restoration mine-closure security — apply across all subsoil-use categories. Structurally this Code is the parent statute for every subsequently filed KZ action: the 2023-12-28 REE Comprehensive Plan and the 2025-12-26 Kazatomprom uranium-priority amendments both operate under delegated authority created by this Code.