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The giant Forties Field was discovered in 1970, only the second oil field to be found in the UK North Sea. Originally predicted to run dry by the early 1990, it has now produced 2.64 billion barrels – and is expected to continue for another 20 years.
In 1910, now 100 years ago, the Shell/Royal Dutch Group drilled the first discovery well in Miri, Sarawak. This oil discovery changed the face of Miri from a small fishery village into a modern city. But it took a lot more than luck to find and produce Sarawak’s only onshore oil field.
In January 1940 (now 70 years ago), with the discovery of the onshore Dukhan oil field, Qatar joined the Middle East’s oil club. In 1960 (50 years ago), Qatar’s first offshore field was discovered. Today, this country, smaller than the state of Connecticut, possesses the world’s third largest gas reserves, and about 25 billion barrels of oil.
Renowned North Sea geologist Richard Hardman looks back at the 1975 discovery of the billion barrel Valhall Field.
The Groningen field in the northern Netherlands is the largest gas field in Europe and the tenth largest in the world. Since its discovery in 1959 it has been instrumental in teaching the oil industry how to intelligently exploit such a vast resource.
The most important oil well ever drilled was sunk in the middle of the wooded landscape of northwest Pennsylvania in August 1859. It is known as the Drake Well, after "Colonel" Edwin L. Drake, the man responsible for the well - who had no knowledge whatsoever of either geology or drilling.
Iraq, which has been on the mass media's spotlight and international focus in recent years, has a record of oil and bitumen dating back to the earliest human civilizations more than five thousand years ago. Here we look at the emergence of Iraq's oil industry in the past century rooted in the heritage of the past millennia and fashioned by the modern geopolitics and geoscience.
2008 marked the 50th anniversary of the very first commercial oil discovery in the Sirt Basin, Libya, in 1958. In the years since then, 22 giant and more than 25 large fields have been discovered, making the basin one of the world's premier petroleum provinces.
In terms of petroleum reserves and production, the Middle East is second to none. The stories behind the first discoveries in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in the 1930s are also intriguing.
2008 marks the 100th anniversary of oil discovery at Masjid Sulaiman in southwest Iran (Persia), which ushered in a new era in the history of the Middle East. This is the story of the men who made this discovery.
The first offshore well was drilled in shallow water in 1968. For the next 30 years, Petrobras has been challenging ocean depths with the innovation and technology that has brought the oil and gas industry into the ultra-deepwater era.
The 1901 discovery of oil at Spindletop, Beaumont, Texas,
not only changed the oil industry for ever; the blowout had such a large impact that the world would never be the same again. Geoscientists and engineers should also remember that the Lucas discovery only became reality because of innovative geological ideas and novel engineering solutions.
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