Oil Discoveries This Year Are Expected to Exceed Last Year by 30%

If the Rest of 2019 Continues at the Same Rate of Oil Discoveries as the First Quarter, the Year Will Exceed the Resources Discovered in 2018 by 30%, According to the Energy Intelligence Group Rystad Energy.

Rystad said on Monday, April 8, that global oil discoveries in the first quarter reached a robust number of 3.2 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe). Taiyab Zain Shariff, upstream analyst at Rystad Energy, said: “If the rest of 2019 continues at a similar pace, this year is on track to exceed last year’s discovered resources by 30%.”

The majority of the gains were recorded in February, with 2.2 billion barrels of discovered resources, which, according to Rystad, was the best monthly record since August 2015.

Rystad added that the major oil companies are leading the charge in exploration, with over 2.4 billion boe (oil and gas) of discovered resources. The six largest discoveries by major companies each exceed 150 million boe, and the three largest may have more than 300 million boe.

“ExxonMobil was the most successful, with three significant offshore discoveries representing 38% of the total volumes of oil and gas discovered“, said Rystad. Rystad placed the recent Glaucus discovery by Exxon offshore Cyprus at the top of the list of the 15 largest conventional discoveries for the first quarter of the year, followed by Total’s Brulpadda discovery in South Africa.

“The major European players Total and Eni are also in the mix with successful offshore wells in South Africa, the UK, Angola, and Egypt,” the intelligence company stated.

As for onshore, the gas from Kali Berau Dalam, operated by Repsol in Indonesia, is the name of the quarter’s top discovery.

Rystad also stated that, from a global perspective, the pressure for new substantial discoveries shows no signs of slowing down, with another 35 high-impact exploration wells expected to be drilled this year, both onshore and offshore.

Three of these highly prospective wells are already underway – Peroba, in the Santos Basin, operated by Shell in Brazil, with prospective resource estimates of 5.3 billion boe, and at the beginning of January, Petrobras made the first discovery in the area, won in a consortium with CNODC and BP Energy in the 3rd sharing round.

The Kekra well by Eni in Pakistani waters, with prospective resource estimates of 1.5 billion boe, and the total Etzil operated well off the coast of Mexico with pre-drilling prospective resource estimates of 2.7 billion boe.

“If these wells are successful, the interim discovered resources of 2019 will be the largest since the slowdown in 2014,” Shariff added.

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