Another Giant – and More to be Found

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.

Halfdan Carstens - Editor in Chief

It is often said the oil industry is a “sunset industry”. Recent discoveries prove that the oil industry has a great future. The Lofoten islands, with possible giants on the seaward side, are in the background. Photo: Halfdan Carstens

And there is more to come. The keen GEO ExPro reader will have learnt from our last edition that there is interesting oil and gas potential in both the Gulf of Mexico and Iraq that still needs to be exploited. The BP Keathley Canyon find proves the point, and the discovery of a new giant field in the highly prospective, under-explored Kurdistan region of North-East Iraq was also recently announced (page 74). The field, known as Miran, is thought to contain between 2.3 and 4.2 billion barrels of oil in place. As told in this edition's Hot Spot (page 80), giants are also a definite possibility in mature basins where most explorationists have left, leaving it to the engineers to produce the last droplet.

It is a matter of data, knowledge and technology. But, it is also a matter of being optimistic. The true explorationist is a stayer, while at the same time being wise enough to leave when a basin is not living up to its expectations - although the latter, of course, is largely dependent of what kind of field sizes the oil company is searching for.

The Norwegian Barents Sea and the deep water Norwegian Sea have not lived up to expectations, as formulated in the Resource Report issued by the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate on September 1 (page 34). We are curious to see who the stayers will be in these huge basins that may yet contain giants, left for the true explorationists to find.

Article from GEO ExPro Magazine NO4 - 2009

Updated: 02.11.2009 15:20 by Alf Kvassheim

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