exploration

This paper demonstrates how maintaining investment in high-quality 3D seismic during the last downturn, together with selective exploration, quality geoscience, application of new technologies, and efficiently maturing discoveries to early cash flow, was successful in sustaining future production.

A significant discovery of oil off Suriname increases the odds that major oilfields off Guyana will extend across that international boundary.

The depth of the world’s offshore projects has steadily increased over the past 30 years—and so has its production base. The growth trend will continue thanks to new fields offshore Brazil, Guyana, and the US.

The confluence of alternative energies, shifting public sentiment, and the industry’s own improvements to existing fields may upend the industry’s “engine of growth.”

The chief upstream strategist of IHS Markit said in a recent presentation that oil exploration must improve its ability to deliver value and better communicate that value to the financial community. New ways of thinking about exploration opportunities are needed.

Total just strengthened its presence in United States deepwater plays through an acquisition from Samson that gives the French company a 12.5% interest in blocks covering the Anchor discovery, one of the most significant recent finds in the Gulf of Mexico.

ExxonMobil continues to make major oil discoveries offshore Guyana, a country that today produces no oil. The just-announced Turbot-1 well is the company’s fifth discovery in Guyana’s waters in a little more than 2 years.

As oil companies struggle with the collapse in crude prices and industry upheaval, assessing the future of exploration and production (E&P) in specific countries requires a longer term vision of a market in which prices will have stabilized and rebounded to a level yet undetermined.

The global industry is feeling the pain of the oil price plunge, but the UK feels it more acutely. Exploration drilling is at rock bottom levels, the offshore UK Continental Shelf is one of the world’s most expensive from which to produce a barrel of oil, and investment spending is expected to fall.