Lingering low oil prices among other factors have caused oil and gas producers to hit the brakes on 68 upstream projects, mostly in deep water, with a combined capex of $380 billion, leaving billions of barrels of hydrocarbons in the ground, according to analysis from an energy consultancy.

“The impact of lower oil prices on company plans has been brutal,” said Angus Rodger, principal analyst of upstream research for Wood Mackenzie (Wood Mac). “What began in late-2014 as a haircut to discretionary spending on exploration and pre-development projects has become a full surgical operation to cut out all non-essential operational and capital expenditure.”

The worldwide supply and demand imbalance has sent commodity prices from above $100/bbl to nearly $30 within about a year and a half. In turn, companies—feeling the pain of tanking profits—are re-evaluating break-evens and seeking cost savings. The result, as the report confirms, is that some fail to see reason in doling out dollars for new projects at this time.

Amid depressing market conditions in second-half 2015, another 22 major projects joined the list of 46 identified as deferred by Wood Mac in June 2015 when oil was trading for about $60/bbl.

In all, the firm reported that 27 billion barrels of oil equivalent (Bboe) of commercial reserves have been deferred due to the delays. There were 7 Bboe added within the last six months.

Many of the final investment decisions (FID) for these projects have been pushed back to at least 2017, delaying first production to sometime between 2020 and 2023, according to the report.

“But against a backdrop of overwhelming corporate pressure to free up capital and reduce future spend—to the detriment of production growth—there is considerable scope for this wall of output to get pushed back further if prices do not recover and/or costs do not fall enough,” Wood Mac said.

Wood Mac’s report showed that oil is being impacted the most. Nearly 3 million barrels a day (bbl/d) of liquids production has been deferred until the next decade.

And just about all parts of the world are being impacted.

Upstream project deferrals appear to be the greatest in Canada, Kazakhstan, Mozambique, Angola and Australia. The U.S. Gulf of Mexico as well as Norway and Nigeria are also high on the list of projects and commercial reserves deferred.

In Canada, for example, oil sands projects have been hit hard. Production and sanctioning delays were announced by Canadian Natural Resources, Cenovus Energy, Husky Energy and Suncor Energy—to name a few—in first-quarter 2015 alone.

Elsewhere, Statoil has delayed the production startup at its Aasta Hanseen Field offshore Norway and the U.K. North Sea Mariner from 2017 to second-half 2018, citing increased costs.

The list also includes the deferral of Kashagan Phase 2 in Kazakhstan and Mozambique’s Golfinho Area development as well as deepwater projects in Angola, according to Wood Mac’s report.

Most of the stalled projects are high-cost deepwater ones. The number of these project deferrals jumped from 17 in June to 29 today.

But commodity prices are not getting all of the blame. The lack of cost deflation is playing a role.

“In the U.S. the tight oil cost curve came down faster than initially expected—lowering break-evens for billions of boe of resource. [But] our analysis suggests change is occurring much slower in areas such as deepwater and oil sands,” Wood Mac said. “To a degree this is expected—the scope for experimentation when drilling hundreds of shale wells is far greater from a cost, speed and safety perspective, compared to re-working traditional large-scale projects.”

Investment criteria are also changing.

“Companies have to adjust investment strategies to the risk of sustained low prices and this means tougher screening criteria for pre-FID projects,” said Tom Ellacott, vice president of corporate analysis for Wood Mackenzie.

The firm believes companies need clear an oil price hurdle of at least $60/bbl for projects to progress.

“Tougher capital allocation criteria will give companies the framework to make difficult decisions about restructuring portfolios, optimizing pre-FID projects and capturing the full benefits of cost deflation,” Ellacott said. “If a sector or country cannot meet new investment thresholds and compete for capital, operators are now more likely to choose divestment over warehousing a stranded resource.”

Wood Mac said more project delays and investment spending cuts are highly likely in 2016 as sub $35/bbl oil prices force companies into survival mode and push them to “re-evaluate how they can profitably develop large, high-cost conventional resources at low prices.”

In turn, the consultancy said it expects to see a push toward standardization and more innovation.

Velda Addison can be reached at vaddison@hartenergy.com.