From Australia: A new report has found that the collapse in global oil prices during the past 12 months is now officially decimating oil and gas exploration activity in Australia—the lifeblood of feedstock for existing and future oil and gas projects.

Despite gas and petroleum annual production hitting record highs over the period, it is feared the exploration collapse also is having a secondary longer term economic impact.

This is the emerging expectation of a significant weakening for years to come in Australia’s oil and gas reserves base.

The latest findings are in the just released March quarterly report by independent analyst EnergyQuest and detailed at the Australia Domestic Gas Outlook conference in Sydney.

EnergyQuest CEO Graeme Bethune said the total number of exploration and development oil and gas wells drilled in Australia nearly halved, falling from 1,534 in calendar 2014 to just 821 in calendar 2015, including exploration wells falling from 119 to 54.

“In that time, exploration spending fell from $1,034 million in Q4 2014 to $446 million in Q4 2015,” Bethune said. “This is Australia’s lowest oil exploration spend in a decade.”

Bethune said the low oil prices had driven significant downwards revisions of reserves, leading to negative reserves replacement ratios over the year just gone.

The collapsed oil price had its worst impacts off Australia’s coastline, with offshore exploration activity crashing last year to just three wells sunk—nine times lower than the 29 offshore targets drilled in 2014.

Bethune believes last year’s drought in offshore drilling is just the beginning of a prolonged period of very low Australian offshore activity, “despite the large take up of new acreage in offshore release programs between 2012 and 2014.”

“A survey by EnergyQuest of work programmes to win offshore acreage in this three-year period shows explorers have guaranteed to spend a total of $1,105 million in the first three years, but this impressive headline figure includes only 12 wells,” Bethune said.

“In addition, winning bidders loaded most of their proposed spending ($1,774 million and 43 exploration wells) into the secondary, nonguaranteed component of their work programs (years four to six of the permits).”