Global oil and gas discoveries hit 4-year high

Oslo, January 10 - Neftegaz.RU. The world’s oil and gas explorers powered ahead and discovered 12.2 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe) in 2019, the highest volume since 2015, according to estimates from Rystad Energy. Last year recorded 26 discoveries of more than 100 million boe, with offshore regions dominating the list of new oil and gas deposits.

Guyana’s success story from 2018 continued in 2019, with ExxonMobil adding 4 new discoveries within its offshore Stabroek block, while Tullow Oil’s Jethro and Joe exploration wells established the presence of a working petroleum system to the west of the Stabroek block. Rystad Energy estimates that the discoveries in Guyana hold cumulative recoverable resources of around 1.8 billion boe.

The US company discovered around 1.07 billion boe in additional net resources last year. Rystad Energy estimates the value creation from these volumes to be around $2.7 billion, largely driven by the continued success in Guyana.

Off the coast of Mauritania, BP’s Orca gas field was not only the largest single discovery, but also the deepest-water find of 2019, estimated by Rystad Energy to hold about 1.3 billion boe of recoverable resources. Recent gas discoveries in the region now support plans to build an additional LNG hub in the Bir Allah area in Mauritania.

In Russia, Gazprom announced 2 discoveries in the Kara Sea, Dinkov in the Rusanovsky block and Nyarmeyskoye in the Nyarmeysky block. Rystad Energy estimates Gazprom’s 2019 discoveries to hold combined recoverable resources of around 1.5 billion boe, with Dinkov ranked as the 2nd-largest find in 2019 world-wide.

Other key offshore discoveries in 2019 include Total’s Brulpadda in South Africa, ExxonMobil’s Glaucus in Cyprus, CNOOC’s Glengorm in the UK and Equinor’s Sputnik in the Norwegian sector of the Barents Sea.

US independent Hess and Chinese CNOOC occupy the 2nd and the 3rd spots on the list of top explorers of 2019 in terms of value creation from new discoveries, with both benefiting from their partnership with ExxonMobil in Guyana’s Stabroek block. Hess added about $2 billion in value from new discoveries last year, while CNOOC had value creation of about $1.8 billion.

Total took 4rth place, with about $873 million in value creation from its 2019 exploration activities. In 2020, Rystad Energy expects the global discovered volumes to continue the rising trend of recent years, with the list of upcoming wildcats including several high-impact wells along with some promising probes delayed from 2019.