MARKETS

Rystad says US leads world oil reserves

Consultancy's global estimates do not match BP's review 

 Rystad says US leads world oil reserves

 
This, the Norway-headquartered consultancy points out, is a different figure to BP's latest statistical review released this week. 
 
"In order to reach a reserves estimate as high as the 1730 billion barrels noted in BP's calculation, Rystad Energy's database would need to include 500 billion barrels from its estimates of yet undiscovered oil," it said. 
 
 
Breaking it down it says the Permian holds 100Bbbl, though shale and tight resources have remained flat last year production was largely replaced by improvements in well configuration, driven by supermajors expanding their footprint in the area and then fine tuning operations.
 
"We also note that production has not been fully replaced by increased reserves in some US shale plays, including Eagle Ford in Texas and Utica in Ohio," CEO Jarand Rystad said. 
 
 "Oil companies have been focusing on core development and cash flows rather than exploration and de-risking non-core assets." 
 
Further afield one of the most positive replacement ratios globally has come from ExxonMobil's tremendous deepwater find offshore Guyana, which stands at over 5Bbbl currently. 
 
"Rystad's annual review of oil reserves provides a consistent grouping of recoverable oil into proven reserves and probable reserves, as well as contingent and prospective recoverable resources," it said, noting that it uses the standard Society of Petroleum Engineers to estimate reserves and resources to compare all fields consistently across the globe, in both OPEC and non-OPEC nations. 
 
It also noted some nations, such as Venezuela "report official reserves apparently including yet undiscovered oil, while others like Brazil and Norway officially report conservative estimates covering only existing fields."
 
Therefore using the SPE standard leads to an estimate of that the world's proven oil reserves, or 1P, total 386Bbbl, which it says is 25% that reported in BP's Statistical Review.
 
It also posited the possibility of Saudi Arabia changing its reporting methodology as it's upwards revision of 10% didn't match increase in activity. 
 
On the other hand the 20% revision to US official reserves "is due to higher reserves reported by the operators and is based on more stringent rules from the US Security Exchange Commission," head of analysis Per Magnus Nysveen said. 
 
 
 
 

A growing series of reports, each focused on a key discussion point for the energy sector, brought to you by the Energy News Bulletin Intelligence team.

A growing series of reports, each focused on a key discussion point for the energy sector, brought to you by the Energy News Bulletin Intelligence team.

editions

ENB CCS Report 2024

ENB’s CCS Report 2024 finds that CCS could be the much-needed magic bullet for Australia’s decarbonisation drive

editions

ENB Cost Report 2023

ENB’s latest Cost Report findings provide optimism as investments in oil and gas, as well as new energy rise.

editions

ENB Future of Energy Report 2023

ENB’s inaugural Future of Energy Report details the industry outlook on the medium-to-long-term future for the sector in the Asia Pacific region.

editions

ENB Cost Report 2021

This industry-wide report aims to understand current cost levels across the energy industry