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Roughly 60 percent of the world’s oil reserves and 41 percent of the world’s gas reserves belong to Middle Eastern countries. Some of that - actually, quite a bit - rests in the Iraqi subsurface.
The existence of a source rock is a prerequisite for finding oil and gas. Without a source, the prospect, the play or the basin is bound to be “dry”. An understanding of both source rock distribution and maturation history is therefore key objectives for petroleum explorationists.
The very first discovery on the Norwegian continental shelf was made in 1966 by Esso Exploration Norway Inc. Well 25/11-1 found small amounts oil in Lower Tertiary sandstones on the Utsira High. This was the second well offshore Norway.
Giants - oil and gas fields with more than 500 million boe in reserves - are no longer a thing of the past. Just before we went to print, BP announced the discovery of possibly 3 billion barrels in the Gulf of Mexico. That's a giant six times over. A few weeks ago it also became known that Iran has made its largest oil find in five years, according Oil Minister Gholamhossein Nozari. More than 8.8 billion barrels of crude oil has reportedly been discovered in the Sousangerd oilfield in the Zagros Mountains, in southwestern Iran, almost next to Iraq. In-place gas reserves discovered in the oil field stand at 11 Tcf, also quite impressive.
Syncrude, the Canadian energy giant that is producing some 350,000bopd from the oil sands in Alberta, has been charged with the deaths of nearly 500 ducks in a massive, toxic settling pond in April 2008. Pictures of sludge-covered birds garnered international attention. The operator highly regrets the incident and says "we feel horrible this occurred and there's a huge resolve in our organization since then to implement the appropriate changes to help prevent it from happening again."
GEO ExPro has now, thanks to an overwhelming response from readers and advertisers, been published for five years. We started in 2004, and since then we have (including this edition) produced 25 magazines with feature articles, interviews and news from all over the world.
The unthinkable has happened. While many renowned experts (?) recently claimed that the price for a barrel of oil would soon pass USD 200, we have now seen the price drop below USD 50/bbl (as of November 21).
Roughly 25 million Euros will be spent next year by the Norwegian government on mapping two regions offshore Norway that have not yet been offered for licensing. The reason for omitting the frontier provinces of Nordland VII and Troms II (offshore Lofoten and Vesterålen) from licensing, is strong resistance from environmentalists claiming that exploring for oil and gas will harm the fisheries and the overall environment.
It's too bad. But it's happening. Partly because of a massive marketing campaign instigated by a multitude of environmental organisations (the "green mafia"), endorsed by several governmental bodies around the world, biofuels are taking an ever larger share of the huge energy market.
One of the most spectacular oil discoveries ever occurred in 1901. On a brisk January morning, the drillers hit pay 308m below the surface of a salt-induced hill. Oil in huge quantities was forced upwards and caused what become known as the Lucas gusher.
“If governments around the world stick with existing policies – the underlying premise of the World Energy Outlook Reference Scenario – the world’s energy needs would be well over 50% higher in 2030 than today,” according to the World Energy Outlook (WOE), published recently by the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Reserve growth, the increase in successive estimates of recoverable hydrocarbons in existing fields, adds more oil to conventional reserves than new field discoveries. Large fields in mature petroleum provinces, it turns out, generally have the largest relative gains. Reserve growth appears to be the most important source for additional reserves in the United States, as explained in the article The Reality of Reserve Growth (pages 34-35) written by Dr Mahendra K. Verma of the U.S. Geological Survey.
The search for oil and gas in the Arctic started more than 50 years ago, and several basins have proven productive. The most prolific province has certainly been the North Slope of Alaska, with Prudhoe Bay being the flagship oilfield of not only Alaska but also the entire U.S. and North America.
Because I have been around a few years longer than some of the financial advisors I happen to meet, I can easily remember when the oil price went below USD 10 per barrel.
As we have now entered the International Polar Year (see also page 72), we should expect a strong focus on the development of fossil fuels in northern latitudes for the years to come.
ExxonMobil has looked into a crystal ball. A major study has just been released in which we can experience an insight to our future use of energy, including fossil fuels as well as renewables (see story page 60). We take it for granted that their predictions are based on solid knowledge and therefore should be trusted as a guideline.
While hydrocarbon resources are said to be scarce nowadays, it is comforting to know that there are still many unexplored geological provinces around the world. In fact, it is sometimes necessary to point out that frontier exploration acreage does still exist.
With a thousand barrels of oil being spent every second, the equivalent of 86 million bopd, and with a 25 year forecast saying that this number will increase to 1,500 bopd, explorationists are left with a huge challenge.
The ongoing discussion about "peak oil" (see also page 66) is about how much oil is left to be produced, i.e. the world oil reserves, and the actual price of oil. The big difference under the current economic conditions is that the price of oil has quadrupled compared to only a few years ago.
Most of us would bluntly say that geology has nothing to do with politics. We tend to believe that geological research is independent of political constraints. It is hard to believe that a scientific article with a pure geological content has to be withdrawn because of political restrictions.
A total of 45 production licenses were just recently awarded in mature areas on the Norwegian continental shelf. The companies have been offered participating interests in 73 blocks or parts of blocks, and 26 companies – including a few of the supermajors – have in this way expanded their acreage portifolio in the North Sea and on the Halten Terrace in the Norwegian Sea.
A new interdisciplinary magazine is launched with a scope of explaining geoscience and technology for everybody involved in exploration and production of oil and gas resources.
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