BAKU, Azerbaijan, Nov.17
By Leman Zeynalova – Trend:
Found oil and gas resources already exceed 8 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe) and are projected to settle at around 10 billion boe by year-end, Trend reports with reference to Rystad Energy.
“About 3.75 billion boe, or 46 percent of total discovered volumes, are gas while liquid volumes are estimated at 4.31 billion boe. Yet-uncounted resources in finds like Sakarya in Turkey point to additional upside, meaning that 2020 will avoid returning to the multi-decade low seen in 2016 at just 7.7 billion boe.
The 73 new discoveries announced this year (through October) are evenly split between land and sea with 36 onshore and 37 offshore. Russia leads in terms of discovery volume, with 1.51 billion boe, while Suriname comes second with 1.39 billion boe and the UAE follows third with 1.1 billion boe.
Of the offshore volumes, which account for slightly over three-quarters of discovered resources, 33 percent was found in ultra-deep waters, 38% in deepwater areas and 29% in shallow waters. Looking at the timing of the discoveries, the third quarter was the weakest with about 2 billion boe of new finds, compared to about 2.7 billion boe during each of the first two quarters.
“Global oil and gas operators will chase plenty of additional volumes in wildcats planned for the final two months of the 2020, although some may not be completed until early 2021 and will therefore add to next year’s tally. We believe discovered volumes are likely to settle at around 10 billion boe,” says Palzor Shenga, senior upstream analyst at Rystad Energy.
Ranking companies by discovered volumes shows that Russia’s Gazprom is in the lead, ahead of Total and Apache. The latter two have found around 960 million boe and 700 million boe respectively of net recoverable resources this year, mainly thanks to three major discoveries in Block 58 off the coast of Suriname.
We expect that only about 4.5 billion boe of the 8 billion boe discovered so far this year will be produced by 2040, and in coming years annual discovered volumes are likely to settle at a new normal of around 10 billion boe per year,” reads the Rystad Energy analysis.
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