Minerals Report - International Seabed Authority

In other regions of the world, encouraging results of deepwater
offshore hydrocarbon exploration were obtained in the late 1990s (1998
and 1999). Two gas fields were discovered in Israel; one, in the Nile delta
in Egypt; three oil/gas fields, off eastern Kalimantan in Indonesia; and one,
in the Bay of Bengal in India.
Five mostly gas discoveries in more than 500 m of seawater were
made off northwestern Australia.
In recent years, oil and gas exploration in the deepwater areas of
the World Ocean is growing in intensity. During the first half of 1999
alone, about 30 new fields were discovered. By the beginning of the year
2000, almost 190 hydrocarbon fields had been discovered in deepwater
areas. Most of these discoveries have been estimated preliminarily, and,
with the exception of some fields in the US, Brazil, and Norway, the
reserves of these fields are not regarded as proven in respective countries.
The initial total deepwater offshore hydrocarbon reserves estimates
for various regions and the world as a whole have been published in some
publications. The most conservative estimate (2.8 Gtoe) is given in Table 3.
According to some other publications, the reserves of all categories are
between 3.1 and 3.4 Gtoe 14, 15, 16, and 17 .
These estimates imply that the ratio of deepwater hydrocarbon
reserves to resources (99 Gtoe) is 2.9-3.4%, and the undiscovered (forecast)
resources are 96 Gtoe.
Production from deepwater oil fields started in 1985 (Brazil). In
1989, a deepwater discovery was brought on-stream in the United States,
and in 1992, in Norway. As of 1 January 2000, a total of 31 oil fields were
producing in these countries. Cumulative production from these fields
was about 420 Mmt. The depletion of the initial potential oil resources is
estimated as 1.2%; total hydrocarbon resources, 0.4%.
As regards Russia, its hydrocarbon prospective offshore areas
cover 3.7 million sq. kms. However, much of these areas are located on
the Arctic shelf, where sea depths are scarcely more than 300 m. The best
studied is the West Arctic shelf of the Barents Sea, where 47 wells have
been drilled and 13 oil and gas fields have been discovered, including the
Shtomanovskoye field with commercial gas reserves of 2.7 Tm 3 . This field
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