Minerals Report - International Seabed Authority

The extremely harsh environment brought up the necessity to
create extra high tensile steel or concrete floating and fixed producing
platforms for the development of deepwater oil and gas fields in the North
and Norwegian seas. Therefore the fields discovered as far back as the late
1970s – early 1980s were brought on-stream only in the mid-1990s. Of the
14 known hydrocarbon fields, three are currently producing, Snorre, Troll
West, and Heidrun, with total reserves of 285 Mmt oil and 45 Gm 3 gas and
a total annual output of 29 Mmt oil.
In West Africa, deepwater offshore exploratory drilling began in
the mid-1990s in Angola and then extended into the deepwater areas of
some other countries.
Deepwater offshore hydrocarbon exploration was most successful
in Angola where 21 fields, including four large ones, had been discovered
by 01.01.2000 (figure 11) 12 . The total reserves in place of these discoveries
are estimated as almost 600 Mmtoe. The Kuito discovery was brought onstream
first, late in 1999, and the other one, Girassol (in 1350 m of
seawater) is due on-stream in 2001.
Figure 11: Angola offshore concession blocks and fields (modified from Raposo 12)
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