Global Oil & Gas Discoveries Up, As Drilling Continues Apace
By Paul Homewood
h/t Dennis Ambler
While Keir Starmer wants to shut down North Sea oil, the rest of the world fortunately is not so stupid:
In a tumultuous year of change in the world, high impact drilling in 2022 remained at a similar level to 2021, with 81 high impact wells completing (Figure 1). Performance improved with discovered resource increasing from 7.4bnboe in 2021 to a preliminary estimate of 9.2bnboe in 2022, and the commercial success rate, i.e., the proportion of wells which may result in a potentially commercial development, increasing from 29% in 2021 to 36%, Westwood Energy authors wrote in their report this week.
High impact well numbers in 2023 look to be in line with 2020-2022 with 75-85 high impact wells currently expected to complete in the year. Higher oil prices in 2022 have not fed through into more exploration.
South America will continue to be a key region for high impact exploration, particularly in the Suriname-Guyana Basin and offshore Brazil. Argentina will see its first ever deepwater well drilled in 2023. Activity in North America is expected to rebound in 2023 following a quiet year in 2022 when only nine high impact wells completed. This will include more than five high impact wells in the US GoM, further commitment wells offshore Mexico, and a key frontier basin test in the Orphan Basin offshore Canada.
Africa is expected to see wells in the emerging Orange Basin offshore Namibia, as well as frontier tests offshore Morocco, Gabon, and Mozambique. The Eastern Mediterranean has also seen a recent up-tick in high impact exploration drilling, which will continue into 2023 with around five high impact wells expected. High impact drilling activity in Europe, the Middle East and Asia Pacific is expected to fall slightly in 2023 compared to the previous year.
2023 Outlook
High impact well numbers in 2023 look to be in line with 2020-2022 with 75-85 high impact wells currently expected to complete in the year. Higher oil prices in 2022 have not fed through into more exploration.
South America will continue to be a key region for high impact exploration, particularly in the Suriname-Guyana Basin and offshore Brazil. Argentina will see its first ever deepwater well drilled in 2023. Activity in North America is expected to rebound in 2023 following a quiet year in 2022 when only nine high impact wells completed. This will include more than five high impact wells in the US GoM, further commitment wells offshore Mexico, and a key frontier basin test in the Orphan Basin offshore Canada.
Africa is expected to see wells in the emerging Orange Basin offshore Namibia, as well as frontier tests offshore Morocco, Gabon, and Mozambique. The Eastern Mediterranean has also seen a recent up-tick in high impact exploration drilling, which will continue into 2023 with around five high impact wells expected. High impact drilling activity in Europe, the Middle East and Asia Pacific is expected to fall slightly in 2023 compared to the previous year.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
UK launches new North Sea licensing round for oil and gas companies News” https://www.offshore-technology.com/news/uk-launches-new-north-sea-licensing-round-for-oil-and-gas-companie/
The UK has oil and gas fields close to home. Why not invest in these ?
Obvious!
Because our Beloved Leaders are so much wiser and kinder than theirs!
Happy to see the UK indigenous population reduced to serfdom, so long as their brown envelopes keep arriving!
And they can still rant on about Leading the World in Saving the Planet!
What’s not to like!
Incidentally, nice to see other countries at least with some desire to reduce the extreme poverty that our lot want for us.
The few youngsters among us may be welcomed ashore in Albania or Somalia in rubber boats, ten years from now?
Unfortunately Starmer is ready to ban all drilling for oil and gas. So we will have NO energy security and will rely on imports. This once great country will
become a third world backwater. How stupid our politicians are.
Well they are attempting this by uncontrolled third world immigration so they will get their wish one way or another
All as directed by the Davos gang in accordance with the United Nations Replacement Migration scheme in parallel with the ongoing destruction of Capitalism.
http://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/climate-change-scare-tool-to-destroy-capitalism
This will end badly.
He is only following instructions from the WEF.
There is a solution, but since we got rid of the first Charles and Wars of the Three Kingdoms we seem very reluctant to even protest, even the Nationalists in Scotland and Wales restrict themselves to a few Marches and the ballot box apart from a handful of arsonists and low level harassment of “incomers”.
Although I think there were about half a dozen attempts to assassinate Victoria and one PM got shot by a lone gunman with a personal grievance although Perceval’s death was met with rejoicing in some parts of the country. There’s been nothing close to a revolution or start of one
Keir Starmer wants to shut down North Sea oil
Shutting down Starmer would be a better idea if that’s the best he can come up with.
Because he is a willing lacky of those who fund garbage like the Laburr Party whose goal is the enfeeblement and destruction of Western Capitalism and Civilization by any means to replace it with anything. This weasel in chief has no clue what will be afterwards. It speaks volumes about the Honours System that such a spineless and immoral person who will push anything for money is deserving of an honour.
It screams at you how this farce is all marxism with its roots in Critical Theory and the Frankfurt School, made more clear by the deafening silence about non Western oil, gas and coal production from the purile pathetic middle class nonentities in search of a reason for the vacuity in their lives who feel “good about themselves” by plaguing the lives of reasonable people with their pointless activism.
“Its all about the science” pontificates the uneducated Swedish moron bedecked in the products of hydrocarbons while standing on a plastic boat, a direct product of hydrocarbons.
If it REALLY is all about the science then tell me where is the statistically significant empirical data supporting the claim that CO2 is responsible for all of this? Where is it? I will tell you where it is, it does not exist! Do not take my word for it, go look yourselves. You will not find anything and please…modelled nonsense about weather or temperature or sea level is 1. NOT empirical data and 2. tells nothing about the cause.
One more time in my life I say “follow the money”.
Whilst we have a Prime Minister and Chancellor who are devotees of the WEF nothing will change. Their sole object is to subjugate the nation. Note the alleged ‘help’ with our energy bills by switching off for an hour. Those of us with smart meters will eventually be subject to the government switching us off.
I liked a comment I saw recently (on WUWT iirc):
“I tried following the science but didn’t find anything. So I followed the money and found the science.”
cracking interview on Talk TV 11.30 (Mike Graham) with a Charles McAllister from Onshore Oil and Gas condemning current electricity situation
” cracking interview on Talk TV 11.30 (Mike Graham) with a Charles McAllister from Onshore Oil and Gas condemning current electricity situation”
Watch again
What does this comment by the Leader of His Majesty’s Official Opposition have with most recent problems in the Energy Industry?
Here’s a good suggestion:
Reagan Official Reveals China’s Rise to Superpower Status
Though it’s really why the West has been left behind. 🙂
Hang on is this actually good news?
ONLY 9.2 billion barrels discovered in a year?
According to Wikipedia the world uses about 76 million barrels per day, so this 9,200 million barrels represents just 120 days of oil !
Nothing is good news if we are instructed to lower our CO2 emissions to zero by 2050. That would require eliminating all of the energy being used in transportation to make the transition to green renewables and EV transportation. 120 days of oil would have to stay in the ground….along with all of the rest. Pretty dumb idea.
9.2 billion is a tiny fraction of the known and estimated reserves.
Using modern prospecting and extraction techniques there are hundreds – perhaps thousands of years’ worth of available petroleum resources left as yet untouched.
Then, using the steerable drilling techniques used for shale extraction and in situ gasification which produces synthesis gas, feedstock for the Fischer-Tropsch coal to oil process, there are trillions of tons of coal accessible in the UK alone.
And then there is the vast amount of methane available as hydrate on the ocean bed and in the arctic permafrost which is even now being investigated with a view to commercial exploitation, see here:
“At the same time, new technologies are being developed in Germany that may be useful for exploring and extracting the hydrates.
The basic idea is very simple: the methane (CH4) is harvested from the hydrates by replacing it with CO2. Laboratory studies show that this is possible in theory because liquid carbon dioxide reacts spontaneously with methane hydrate.
If this concept could become economically viable, it would be a win-win situation, because the gas exchange in the hydrates would be attractive both from a financial and a climate perspective.”
http://worldoceanreview.com/en/wor-1/energy/methane-hydrates/2/
Even less. This is BOE not barrels. Global liquids demand (crude & NGL’s) is about 100 million bbls/d.
This is nothing to get excited about 9.2 bn BOE is about 20% of the oil and NGL’s used in 1 year. So this huge find is about 2.5 months of annual consumption at best. Big deal. In reality the recovery might be conservative but it is not going to replace what was consummed in the past year.
Too often, far too much emphasis is placed upon resources not what is likely to be recovered. This is the problem the US has with shale, and most likely the UK will have with tight oil and gas in the UK. How much can be produced affordably and provide a net energy gain. Within 5 years US shale production will peak. Even if fraccing is allowed in the UK it is unlikely that it will be profitabe and it certainly will not be cheap. Using existing assetts in the North Sea makes sense but it looks like Labour will condemn us to fuel poverty.
“Peak Oil” is just SOOO Twentieth Century…
Your ignorance on the subject of oil and gas production is about what I would expect from a retired town gas plant operator and matches that of Keir Starmer. i.e zero
Heh, I wondered if that would lure you out from under your bridge.
Sorry sunshine, but as a chemical engineer with considerable experience of the oil and gas industry, in particular the days of the “Dash for Gas”, I think that’s you actually.
I don’t know where you claim to have got your knowledge from, but if you paid for it you need to ask for your money back!
Oh, and here are some more of my prognostications for you to froth and gibber over!
Using modern prospecting and extraction techniques there are hundreds – perhaps thousands of years’ worth of available petroleum resources left as yet untouched.
Then, using the steerable drilling techniques used for shale extraction and in situ gasification which produces synthesis gas, feedstock for the Fischer-Tropsch coal to oil process, there are trillions of tons of coal accessible in the UK alone.
And then there is the vast amount of methane available as hydrate on the ocean bed and in the arctic permafrost which is even now being investigated with a view to commercial exploitation, see here:
“At the same time, new technologies are being developed in Germany that may be useful for exploring and extracting the hydrates.
The basic idea is very simple: the methane (CH4) is harvested from the hydrates by replacing it with CO2. Laboratory studies show that this is possible in theory because liquid carbon dioxide reacts spontaneously with methane hydrate.
If this concept could become economically viable, it would be a win-win situation, because the gas exchange in the hydrates would be attractive both from a financial and a climate perspective.”
http://worldoceanreview.com/en/wor-1/energy/methane-hydrates/2/
If I were you I’d watch my blood pressure!
” there are trillions of tons of coal accessible in the UK alone.”
The energy stored within that coal should be sufficient to keep the UK going for centuries. Perhaps even long enough for fusion power to be finally viable.
Neat, very neat.
Paul If you can find this, it may interest you .’Bloomberg GreenZERO’, ‘Climate crisis forcing insurance industry to reinvent its self’. it has an interesting graph you might make more sense of than me. Kind regards Paul (Lorde Late) Gardner
Anybody out there can explain “high-impact” drilling?
High impact?
This seems to be drilling in areas not now known as producing areas. That is,
these are exploration wells in previously undrilled areas so there is potential for high-impact discoveries.
Three other points:
– wells are still being drilled in known producing areas;
and
– U. S. companies are using income to pay down debt and return money to shareholders. With the petro unfriendly Administration, companies are being cautious.
And
– If certain countries “get their act together” they will find and pump oil and gas for many years and great wealth
High Impact?
The discovery changes the economy of the country owning the discovery.
Think of it as like winning the lottery for countries.
e.g. Groningen Gas Field – The Netherlands
Forties Oil Field UK
Brent Oil Field UK “This one was so big even the office cleaners could see it on the seismic data”.
Troll Gas Field Norway “The Seismic Processors worked very hard to try and get rid of this one’s Direct Hydrocarbon Indicator seismic anomaly. The anomaly was just too big to possibly be real, but it was.”
It is so encouraging to see others not signed up to this NetZero cr*p.
According to the Oil & Gas Journal, Global proven oil reserves increased during 2022 from 1,735 billion barrels to 1,757 billion. If we take world consumption to be 36 billion a year, that means that finds amounted to 57 billion – a very healthy amount – and proven reserves are enough for 50 years if we assume that use has peaked.
https://www.ogj.com/exploration-development/reserves/article/14286688/global-oil-and-gas-reserves-increase-in-2022
Of course, ‘finds’ are a largely routine matter, and to be expected. Moving from ‘possible’ to ‘probable’ to ‘proven’ to ‘extracted’ (and then to ‘rejuvenated’) is just the industry cycle.
The Wall Street Journal is a pay site, however here is the link:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-offshore-oil-business-is-gushing-again-11674277212
Copy of the article here…
https://energiesnet.com/the-offshore-oil-business-is-gushing-again-wsj/
So, Germany and the UK are happy to import (relatively expensive) LNG from Fracking in the USA and import any oil (even Russian, via India) but not use their own resources …………….. Hypocrisy and stupidity rule!
The world is motoring on in the profitable development of their oil wells, except that is for Britain where the green blob, the Government, all political parties, the MSM, the BBC and other broadcasters are all shouting ‘end oil exploration’. If only one political leader in the UK would have the courage to come out and oppose this utter stupidity, I’m sure they would take the country by storm. Come on Kier Starmer, you heard the idiots like Gore and Kerry fantasizing in their stupidity in Davos, have the courage to ridicule them publicly, which surely you must; you only risk the leadership of your party by idiotic fanatics within the party , but you are sure to gain the support of millions of sensible people if you are seen to bring the nation back from the brink.
Keir Starmer IS A PROSTITUTE who takes his orders in Davos where he was last week to have his script written by the criminals who think they are governing our planet.
Most Brits like other western populations have complied to all the covid scam diktats and submitted like the cowards and total ignorant they are. Don’t wonder then that the criminals behind this agenda now try to do the exact same with the climate hoax.
Will the sheeple wake-up this time?