At the International Association of Drilling Contractors World Drilling Conference in Copenhagen in mid-June, Andrew Reid, chief executive officer of business and research analysis firm Douglas-Westwood, stated that three regions of the globe– Arctic, Brazil, and West Africa –will see the most drilling activity in the foreseeable future.
According to Douglas-Westwood, the Arctic will become the next frontier in offshore discovery. According to the USGS Arctic and Oil and Gas Report, the sum of the mean estimates of remaining discoverable resources for Arctic Circle provinces are 90 billion barrels of oil, 1,669 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 44 billion barrels of natural gas liquids.
Deepwater activity will also surge. By 2015, spending is forecast to total $126 billion in two leading deepwater provinces, offshore Brazil and West Africa, said Reid. From its inception in 1990, deepwater oil production is expected to reach 13% of the world total by 2020. Likewise, offshore fields accounted for 31% of worldwide oil production in 2000, and now supply 33%.
Reid also forecast that drilling in emerging onshore markets will grow. Iraq drilling should increase by 24% through 2015, and active rig demand should increase in Latin America and major Asian markets, including China and India.
Contact the author, Larry Prado, at lprado@hartenergy.com.
Recommended Reading
Defeating the ‘Four Horsemen’ of Flow Assurance
2024-04-18 - Service companies combine processes and techniques to mitigate the impact of paraffin, asphaltenes, hydrates and scale on production—and keep the cash flowing.
Tech Trends: AI Increasing Data Center Demand for Energy
2024-04-16 - In this month’s Tech Trends, new technologies equipped with artificial intelligence take the forefront, as they assist with safety and seismic fault detection. Also, independent contractor Stena Drilling begins upgrades for their Evolution drillship.
AVEVA: Immersive Tech, Augmented Reality and What’s New in the Cloud
2024-04-15 - Rob McGreevy, AVEVA’s chief product officer, talks about technology advancements that give employees on the job training without any of the risks.
Lift-off: How AI is Boosting Field and Employee Productivity
2024-04-12 - From data extraction to well optimization, the oil and gas industry embraces AI.
AI Poised to Break Out of its Oilfield Niche
2024-04-11 - At the AI in Oil & Gas Conference in Houston, experts talked up the benefits artificial intelligence can provide to the downstream, midstream and upstream sectors, while assuring the audience humans will still run the show.