The fall in oil prices has led to the fact that the world production leaders are investing less in exploration, which threatens to reduce reserves and a deficit on the market. The last one will push prices up, but if you do not work to increase the world’s oil reserves, it may end by the end of the century. The stock recovery will allow you to delay this event for about 25 years, and the main role here will play Russia.
The number of open oil fields last year fell to the lowest level in the last 70 years. On Tuesday, Bloomberg writes, citing a study by consultancy Wood Mackenzie.
WM analysts say that in 2015 it was discovered only 2.7 billion barrels of oil-nearly one-tenth of the average intelligence in 60-e years of the last century, and is the lowest level since 1947.
This year, new deposits can be opened even less Wood Mackenzie warns (at the end of July was revealed new reserves of only 736 million barrels). In 2016, the world has a total of 209 drilled new wells, whereas last year their number has reached 680, and in 2014 — 1167 pieces. And since the 1960-ies, the figure was approximately 1,500 wells per year.
Vice-President WM Andrew Latham indicates that the oil companies have cut exploration costs from $100 billion in 2014 to $40 billion in 2016 And approximately at the same level of investment in exploration, according to Latham, will remain until 2018.
According to the British BP world oil reserves last year fell by 2.4 billion barrels.
“Reducing the rate of new discoveries is obviously connected not only with macroeconomic conditions and falling prices per barrel,” — said the Minister of natural resources Sergey Donskoy.
The Minister recalled that most areas in the world already discovered, in fact, remain only a backup site, offshore and remote regions. “In a world of them in Russia – a territory of Eastern Siberia, the deep horizons of the Western Arctic shelf,” explains don.
The representative of the Norwegian consulting company Rystad Energy AS, Nils-Henrik Burstrom, warns that the situation in the long term will significantly affect the market supply of hydrocarbons, especially oil.
By the way, Vice-President and co-owner of the Russian “LUKOIL” Leonid Fedun in April said that by the end of the year the shortage in the world oil market is inevitable.
At the moment it is able to give a positive result, oil prices will one day go up.
However, in the long run, exploration is very important, especially considering that oil — non-renewable resource (unlike, for example, from wood).
Leading expert of the Union of Industrialists of Russia Rustam Tankan says that generally in the world situation, exploration is now really heavy.
“Last year, leaders of the world market was forced to close projects with a total cost of approximately $400 billion, — says the expert. In the first half of 2016, that figure exceeded $200 billion.”
According to Tankaev, a very significant closure of projects, ExxonMobil and Saudi projects on the shelf of the red sea. But the most obvious is the refusal of Shell from the development of offshore Alaska (the project was estimated at $7 billion), of which the British-Dutch company has long sought.
At the same time Russia, as indicated by the Tankan, the investment in exploration is not actually decreased. Some companies have really reduced the expenditure on exploration, but others, on the contrary, increased.
“So in fact in Russia we can even speak about the growth of investments in exploration,” says Tankan.
Sergey Donskoy said that the security of Russia’s already open proven (according to the international classification) reserves estimated by the most conservative standards of 15 billion tonnes – that is about 30 years of production at today’s rate. If to speak about the technologically extractable reserves, it is about 30 billion tons.
Rustam Tankan notes that countries that produce oil are in different position. For example, countries such as Qatar or the UAE can no longer rely on opening new fields, and the stocks there begin to dwindle. In other countries, the percentage of exploration of the subsoil are much lower.
“Further exploration in Russia are able to add global reserves of 80 billion tons of oil, 80% of the world’s potential reserves growth,” says Tankan.
Rystad Energy in July published a study according to which the world’s oil reserves are 2,092 trillion barrels, or about the 286, 5 billion tons. Annual production — 30 billion barrels (4.1 billion tons).
Thus, while maintaining the level of production and consumption, and without regard to recovery of reserves of oil will last about 70 years. If the potential increase will be realised — at 95 years old.
