The creaming curve for lease sales in Brazil looks like it is turning towards the asymptote overall. Unfortunately there is insufficient data provided to allow land and marine leasing to be separated but I expect that the curve for land is close to the limit but that for marine areas is barely half way. The average take up of offers has remained high, which suggests APB, the Brazilian authority in charge, is discerning about what it offers.
The global peak in oil and gas production for UK occurred in 1999 and 2000, probably delayed by four or five years by the Piper Alpha tragedy, and will not be approached, far less exceeded, again. There have been two other local peaks, each one preceded by about ten to twelve years by a local peak in the number of discoveries. The UK Oil and Gas Authority does not publish individual field resources, but it’s a fair bet that the large fields were discovered early on and most of the recent discoveries are small, near field tie-ins.
A Guest Post by George Kaplan
Overall Annual Production
US Gulf of Mexico C&C production has had a series of peaks; firstly two from shallow oil, the middle acceleration probably caused by the mid seventies oil shock; followed by deep oil development and finally by ultra deep oil, with a dip in the middle from the Deep Horizon drilling hiatus. Most production has come from eastern and central (i.e. mainly Louisiana) with some, and falling, from the western section (Texas).
A Guest Post by George Kaplan
Exploration, Discoveries and Development
Drilling and development activity off shore Norway has been fairly steady through the life of the basin. This has been partly from government policy, through tax relief or direct action, but also through opening up of new areas as technology becomes available. It has moved from mainly producing oil to now being dominated by gas, although there is little direct gas exploration now (note that converting gas to o.e. is simple in S.I. units and is just a factor of 1000).
Drilling activity has been high in the 2000’s for development wells (including a lot of in fill drilling and some major redevelopments) and exploration (I think there is very favourable tax arrangements that encourage drilling in even fairly low prospective areas). Appraisal drilling has been more flat and there has been some reports that some discoveries have proved disappointing after start up, possibly because of insufficient drilling before development was approved.
There are twelve projects “approved for production” (i.e. in development) with average reserves of 26.5 MSm3 and average discovery year 2001; nineteen projects “production in clarification phase” (i.e. in FEED or pre-FEED) with average resources of 25 MSm3 and average discovery year also 2001; twenty nine projects “production likely but unclarified” (i.e. in conceptual design) with average resources of 10 MSm3 and average discovery year also 2003; and twenty eight projects “production not evaluated” with resources of 8.5 MSm3 and average discovery year also 2010.
The number of “hydrocarbon shows” has been large recently but they have mostly been small with “production unlikely” or “not yet evaluated” (and present prices mean most of these are likely to be deferred at best).
The number of development projects per year has, if anything, been increasing slightly, although the size has been generally decreasing. The number of shut down fields is increasing slowly but the have been a number that have had their life times extended beyond their original shut-down date (through improved reservoir performance and/or major redevelopments).
The oil price may have influenced activity but I can’t really see it much, maybe the effect of the current crash will be more obvious.
Read MoreIn the discussion here I use the term net volume to refer to the volume of prospective rock that might be developed to produce tight oil. For each bench of a prospective tight oil play (Wolfcamp A would be one example of a bench) there is an area estimate (5733 thousand acres for Wolfcamp A of Delaware) and a success ratio (%) = 94.7, in the case of Wolfcamp A. Net acres are the total acres times the success ratio, for Wolfcamp A, 5429 thousand net acres. On average the Wolfcamp A of the Delaware basin is about 400 feet thick, so the net volume would be net acres times thickness or 2172 million acre-feet. An acre-foot is a volume that is one acre (44,000 square feet) by one foot thick or 44,000 cubic feet (or a box that is 1000 ft long by 44 feet wide by 1 foot high.)
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