Deepwater Gulf of Mexico 2004: America's Expanding ... - OCS BBS

4,500
4,000
3,500
Leases tested
Leases expiring
Untested leases in primary term
3,000
Number of Leases
2,500
2,000
1,500
1,000
500
0
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Year
Figure 78. The challenge of deepwater lease evaluation.
from these sales, 11 of these wells resulted in announced discoveries. Figure 78 shows a steep decline in
active leases as the large number of leases acquired in 1996 through 1998 start to expire. Note that this
graph does not include the hundreds of new leases that will be added to the inventory each year from
upcoming lease sales. The available deepwater rig fleet will challenge industry’s ability to evaluate their
lease inventory, both current and future additions. Other factors play a significant role in the industry’s
ability to evaluate their GOM lease inventory, including alternative deepwater exploration and
development targets throughout the world, capital limitations, and limited qualified personnel.
EXPANDING FRONTIER
It is instructive to look back to the earlier deepwater reports (figure 79) and observe the dramatic
increases in proved reserves and discovered volumes (which include proved and unproved reserves,
resources, and industry-announced discoveries). Many of the discovered volumes in earlier reports have
progressed to become proved reserves in subsequent reports. For example, in the last report, Thunder
Horse was in the discovered-volumes category, and in this report its volumes are classified as proved
reserves. While both proved reserves and discovered volumes have substantially increased from report to
report, the most dramatic increases have occurred in the discovered volumes. This suggests a bright
outlook for future deepwater production, as the less constrained resource and industry-announced
volumes move into the reserve category and are produced.
The future of deepwater GOM exploration and production remains very promising. As shown in
figure 78, industry is nearing the end of the primary lease term of the exceptional number of leases
acquired in 1996 through 1998. Traditional deepwater minibasin plays are far from mature, as several
recent discoveries attest, and new deepwater plays near and even beyond the Sigsbee Escarpment, beneath
thick salt canopies, and in lightly explored Paleogene reservoirs show that the deepwater GOM is an
expanding frontier. As shown in figure 57, the immature deepwater creaming curve predicts that
numerous large undiscovered fields remain. The 2000 Assessment indicates that more than 50 billion
recoverable BOE remain to be discovered (Lore et al., 2001).
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