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Rystad: in the first half of 2023, explorers found 2.6 billion barrels of oil equivalent.
The exploration and production (E&P) industry is in a transitionary period, with many companies exercising increased caution and shifting their strategies to target more profitable and geologically better-understood regions.
In the hunt for new resources, exploration companies are prioritizing the offshore sector.

Spending on conventional oil and gas exploration is rebounding and expected to top $50 billion this year, the highest since 2019, but operators are still waiting for the results they had hoped for. Rystad Energy research shows that despite the rising investments, discovered volumes are falling to new lows.

Our estimates show that in the first half of 2023, explorers found 2.6 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe), 42% lower than the first half of 2022 total of 4.5 billion boe. Fifty-five discoveries have been made, compared to 80 in the first six months of last year. This means discoveries in 2023 have averaged 47 million boe, lower than the 56 million boe per discovery for the same period in 2022.

The exploration and production (E&P) industry is in a transitionary period, with many companies exercising increased caution and shifting their strategies to target more profitable and geologically better-understood regions. This strategic shift and the failure of several critical high-potential wells are contributing to the precipitous drop.

In the hunt for new resources, exploration companies are prioritizing the offshore sector, trying to capitalize on underexplored or frontier areas to unlock new volumes through high-risk, higher-cost offshore developments. The offshore industry accounted for about 95% of exploration spending this year to date but only about two-thirds of discovered volumes.

“Upstream companies are facing a period of uncertainty. They are eager to capitalize on the increased demand for fossil fuels and find additional resources, but recent results have been lackluster…

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Oil and gas discoveries are at the lowest level since 1946

December 31, 2021

Oil and gas discoveries are at the lowest level since 1946

US BUREAU OF SAFETY AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENFORCEMENT

Offshore oil platforms are becoming a rarer sight.

Oil and gas firms are having their worst year for new fossil fuel discoveries in decades and reserves are dwindling. The oil and gas industry is on track to discover just 4.7 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe) by the end of 2021, its worst performance in 75 years, according to the research firm Rystad Energy.

Historically, large discoveries have accounted for most of the world’s new reserves. Globally, 40% of all petroleum ever discovered has been found in 900 oil and gas fields. But the industry has made few such discoveries this year. The ratio of proven reserves to production, a measure of how much extractable oil remains in the ground relative to annual production, is now at its lowest level since 2011.

Production of existing wells naturally declines each year, so the industry must constantly open up new fields to keep pace with demand. The International Energy Agency estimates global oil production declines by about 7% per year without investment in existing fields.

Yet cash to reinvest in new supply is scarce. Since the mid-2010s, US oil and gas firms have slashed capital expenditures as their stock prices plummeted. During the pandemic, firms cut exploration budgets even more to trim debt, pay dividends, and stem huge losses from a US fracking boom that failed to generate profits. “The industry was in a survival mode throughout 2020, reducing its capital expenditures to match with low cash flows through the 2020 covid-19 recession,” according to the American Petroleum Institute (API).

In 2020, industry investment dropped by $145 billion, leaving it at about half the level it was in 2014. It remained at a similar level into 2021. The OPEC+ bloc of oil-producing nations has also proven unusually disciplined at curtailing production.

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Global oil discoveries far from breaking even with consumption

November 28, 2019

Global oil discoveries far from breaking even with consumption

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is oil-discoveries-rystad-2013-2018.jpg

Preface. According to Bloomberg (2016), oil discoveries in 2015 were the lowest since 1947, with just 2.7 billion barrels of conventional oil found globally (though Rystad calculated this differently at 5.6, nearly twice as much). Since the world burns 36.5 billion barrels of oil a year in 2019, we’re not even close to breaking even.

Rystad Energy (2019) in “Global discoveries on the rise as majors take a bigger bite” estimates barrels of oil equivalent, which includes both conventional oil and gas. Since oil is the master resource that makes gas, transportation, and all other goods and activities possible, I’ve taken the second number as the percent of oil in the BOE to come up with how much conventional oil was found. It falls way short of the 36.5 billion barrels we’re consuming. The pantry is emptying out, perhaps pushing the peak oil date forward in time as we continue to grow at 1% a year in oil consumption and put nothing at all back on the shelves. Peak Demand? Ha! Not until we’re forced to cut back from oil shortages.

2013 50:50 17.4 billion BOE  8.7 billion BOE oil  shortfall: 27.8 billion BOE
2014 54:46 16.0 billion BOE  7.4 billion BOE oil shortfall: 29.1 billion BOE
2015 61:39 14.4 billion BOE  5.6 billion BOE oil shortfall: 30.9 billion BOE
2016 57:43 8.4 billion BOE  3.6 billion BOE oil  shortfall: 32.9 billion BOE
2017 40:60 10.3 billion BOE 6.2 billion BOE oil shortfall: 30.3 billion BOE
2018 46:54 9.1 billion BOE 4.9 billion BOE oil  shortfall: 31.6 billion BOE

This doesn’t include fracked oil, but the IEA expects that to peak somewhere from now to 2023.

What it means is enjoy life while it’s still good, and stock your pantry while you’re at it.

***

Mikael, H. August 29, 2016. Oil Discoveries at 70-Year Low Signal Supply Shortfall Ahead. Bloomberg.

2016 figure only shows exploration results to August. Discoveries were just 230 million barrels in 1947 but skyrocketed the next year when Ghawar was discovered in Saudi Arabia, and is till the world's largest oil field. Source: Wood Mackenzie — 2016 figure only shows exploration results to August. Discoveries were just 230 million barrels in 1947 but skyrocketed the next year when Ghawar was discovered in Saudi Arabia, and it is still the world’s largest oil field, though recently it was learned that Ghawar is in decline at 3.5% a year. Source: Wood Mackenzie

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Is It Too Late To Avoid An Oil Supply Crisis?

November 21, 2018

Is It Too Late To Avoid An Oil Supply Crisis?

Wood Mackenzie isn’t pulling any punches. “The warning signs are there – the industry isn’t finding enough oil.”

And its latest report continues in the same ‘spade is a spade’ vein: “A supply gap opens up in the mid-2020s, reaching 3 million b/d by 2030, 9 million b/d by 2035 and a formidable 15 million b/d by 2040. Barring technology breakthrough, we’ll need new oil discoveries.”

And then the crucial phrase:

“The problem is that the recent rate of commercial volumes found gives little confidence that there will be enough new discoveries to fill the gap.”

It warns that the only solution at this stage is a significant hike of at least 20% in annual investment. It unapologetically lays the finger of blame on the gradual reduction in investment during the current cycle.

Without a commitment to drive new discoveries, there will be consequences. Prices would of course rocket. Companies’ growth targets would be under the spotlight and would inevitably lead to increased numbers of mergers and acquisitions.

However it may even be too late to avoid difficulties altogether. Given that the average length of time between discovery and peak production is the best part of a decade, we’re already running short.

But it urges action nonetheless.

Firstly: sort out capital availability: “the duty to shareholders’ interests cannot be myopically short-term.” In recent times the focus has shifted from growth to profitability and returns. Energy stocks aren’t what they once were on Wall Street.

Next: the reward has to justify the risk. It’s a fact that the checks and balances the industry developed post-crash means greater returns – ‘double-digit…in 2017, the highest for more than a decade.” So exploration is now better placed to deliver ROI.

And finally, head to the frontier. At the start it pays tribute to the delivery from Guyana, and names Suriname, Mexico, Senegal, Australia and others are being the “most eagerly watched potential play opening wells”.

The Oil Industry Needs Large New Discoveries, Very Soon

October 2, 2018

The Oil Industry Needs Large New Discoveries, Very Soon

Market participants and analysts are all focused on the imminent oil supply gap that is opening with the U.S. sanctions on Iran just five weeks away.

But beyond the shortest term, a larger and more alarming gap in global oil supply is looming—experts forecast that unless large oil discoveries are made soon, the world could be short of oil as early as in the mid-2020s.

The latest such prediction comes from energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie, which sees a supply gap opening up in the middle of the next decade. At the current level of low oil discoveries and barring technology breakthrough beyond WoodMac’s assumptions, that supply gap could soar to 3 million bpd by 2030, to 7 million bpd by 2035, and to as much as 12 million bpd by 2040.

It’s not that discoveries aren’t being made, they just aren’t enough to offset the natural decline at mature fields while global oil demand is still expected to continue to rise.

The main reason for lower discoveries is that spending on exploration has drastically plunged since the 2014 oil price crash. The good news is, according to Wood Mackenzie, that the volume of new discoveries is correlated with spending on exploration. So if spend were to increase, the chance of more and major oil discoveries gets higher.

As early as the beginning of this year, WoodMac said that the share of exploration of upstream investment has slipped to below 10 percent since 2016 and is not about to recover. “This could be the new normal, with the days of one dollar in six or seven going to exploration forever in the past,” the consultancy said in its ‘5 Things to look for in 2018.’

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Our Latest Oil Predicament

March 13, 2018

Our Latest Oil Predicament

It is impossible to tell the whole oil story, but perhaps I can offer a few insights regarding where we are today.

[1] We already seem to be back to the falling oil prices and refilling storage tanks scenario.

US crude oil stocks hit their low point on January 19, 2018 and have started to rise again. The amount of crude oil fill has averaged about 365,000 barrels per day since then. At the same time, prices of both Brent and WTI oil have fallen from their high points.

Figure 1. Average weekly spot Brent oil prices from EIA website, with circle pointing to recent downtick in prices.

Many people believe that the oil problem, when it hits, will be running out of oil. People with such a belief interpret a glut of oil to mean that we are still very far from any limit.

[2] An alternative story to running out of oil is that the economy is a self-organized system, operating under the laws of physics. With this story, too little demand for oil is as likely an outcome as a shortage of oil.

Oil and energy products are used to create everything, even jobs. If all humans have is energy from the sun, plus the energy that all animals have, then humans would be much more like chimpanzees. All humans would be able to do is gather plant food and catch a few easy-to-catch animals (earthworms and crickets, for example). They certainly could not extract oil or find uses for it.

It takes a self-organized economy to support the extraction and sale of energy products. We need a complex web that includes:

Equipment to extract the oil
Training for engineers and other workers
Devices that use oil, such as vehicles, farm equipment, road paving equipment
A financial system to enable transactions to purchase oil
Buyers with jobs that pay well enough that they can afford to buy goods made with oil

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Norway Desperately Needs Large Oil Discoveries

January 16, 2018

Norway Desperately Needs Large Oil Discoveries

Thanks to costs cuts and large oil discoveries made before the oil price crash, Norway will be able to sustain its oil and gas production over the next five years. But reduced exploration drilling and lack of big discoveries in the past two years spell trouble for Western Europe’s biggest oil and gas producer after 2023, authorities fear.

Nearly two-thirds of the undiscovered resources are thought to be located in the Barents Sea, the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD) directorate said last week in its review of the Norwegian Continental Shelf in 2017.

However, last year’s exploration campaign in Norway’s Arctic was a flop. Oil companies are not giving up on Barents Sea exploration, but firms and authorities alike have now lowered expectations about the possibility of a huge discovery in those areas.

“In the part of the Barents Sea that’s currently open, you’ve sort of tried the elephants — the big opportunities,” Bente Nyland, Director General of the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate, told Bloomberg in a recent interview. “You’re now down to the next generation in size,” Nyland noted.

The authority would be happy with any discovery of around 500 million barrels of oil, Nyland told Bloomberg.

Last year, the most promising exploration well Korpfjell—the first well drilled in the Norwegian section of a formerly disputed area between Norway and Russia, and the northernmost wildcat well drilled on the Norwegian shelf—was a disappointmentcompared to expectations that it could contain more than 250 million barrels of oil equivalent, or even 1 billion boe.

The disappointing Barents Sea campaign led to just 11 companies applying for production licenses in Norway’s 24th licensing round that offered 93 blocks in the Barents Sea and 9 blocks in the Norwegian Sea. Statoil, Aker BP, and Lundin were all applying, but the NPD said that “The applicant landscape could indicate that some parties are prioritizing exploration in mature areas this time around,” commenting on the applications.

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U.S. Shale Can’t Offset Record-Low Oil Discoveries

January 2, 2018

U.S. Shale Can’t Offset Record-Low Oil Discoveries

The U.S. shale resurgence has been one of the main themes in oil markets this year, while OPEC’s production cut deal to deplete the oil overhang and boost oil prices has been the other key development in 2017.

U.S. shale production is expected to grow over the next few years as the companies that survived the worst of the downturn showed resilience in the face of the lower-for-longer oil prices. But three years of low oil prices also led to the global oil industry slashing investments in conventional oil exploration, and deferring or revisiting development plans.

This has led to the lowest ever volumes of oil discoveries in 2017, Rystad Energy said last week. While the low level of discoveries is not an immediate threat to global oil supply, it could become such ten years down the road, according to Rystad Energy.

In ten years’ time, U.S. shale production may have peaked, at least according to OPEC that sees shale peaking after 2025, although the cartel has conceded that U.S. tight oil has defied previous forecasts and has increased production more than initially expected and will continue to do so in the short term.

This year has seen less than 7 billion barrels of oil equivalent discovered globally, a volume as low as last seen in the 1940s, Rystad Energy has estimated. What worries analysts the most is the fact that this year the reserve replacement ratio—the amount of discovered resources relative to the amount of production—was a mere 11 percent, compared to 50 percent in 2012, Sonia Mladá Passos, Senior Analyst at Rystad Energy, said.

The Biggest Factors In Future Oil Production

Another point of concern is that the resources discovered per field also dropped, and this could affect the commercial viability of new discoveries.

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Norway’s Oil Sector Faces Existential Crisis

November 7, 2017

Norway’s Oil Sector Faces Existential Crisis

Oil companies have recently focused on frontier exploration drilling in the Barents Sea offshore in Norway, neglecting the powerhouse of the Norwegian oil industry, the North Sea.

Exploration activity in the North Sea—the most mature area of Western Europe’s biggest oil producer—is at an 11-year low this year, which is a concern for the industry’s regulator, the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD).

“That worries me,” NPD Director General Bente Nyland told Bloomberg in a recent interview, voicing the industry concern that without new oil discoveries, especially in mature areas with well-connected infrastructure, the decline in Norway’s oil production would be even bigger than expected.

Following a continual decline between 2001 and 2013, Norway’s crude oil production rose last year for the third year running, but according to the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD), oil production this year would be nearly half the volume from the peak in 2000-2001.

Two huge fields discovered in 2010 and 2011, Johan Sverdrup in the North Sea, and Johan Castberg in the Barents Sea, are expected to start operations in 2019 and 2022, respectively, and will lift Norway’s oil production in the early 2020s compared to expected declines in 2018 and 2019.

But after 2025, production and activity are expected to significantly drop off unless there are new discoveries, according to oil major Statoil.

Norway’s Ministry of Petroleum and Energy, and NPD say:

“Production from new fields that come on stream will compensate for the decline in production from ageing fields. However, in the longer term, the level of production will depend on new discoveries being made, the development of discoveries, and the implementation of improved recovery projects on existing fields.”

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