Oil Around the World

The February issue of Geotimes has an interesting assortment of oil discoveries and their attendant problems around the world. I recommend that you read it.

Excerpt:

Norway’s economy depends on the sea. Many tons of cod, herring, mackerel and other fish hauled in from Norwegian waters land on dinner plates around the world each year, making Norway the world’s second-largest fish exporter. Fifty years ago, no one would have predicted that another offshore resource — hydrocarbons — would one day supersede fish as Norway’s most valuable asset.

“The chances of finding coal, oil or sulfur on the continental shelf off the Norwegian coast can be discounted,” an official from the Norwegian Geological Survey wrote in a letter to the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1958. The following year, however, a large gas field was discovered in the North Sea off the coast of the Netherlands, prompting speculation that similar deposits might lie a bit farther north. Exploration in Norwegian waters began in the early 1960s. By 1966, oil was discovered in the country’s first offshore well, and oil production began five years later in Norway’s first major oil field, Ekofisk. As of 2005, Norway was the world’s third-largest natural gas exporter and fifth-largest oil exporter. In 2006, these exports brought the country $94 billion — 15 times more than the value of fish exports, according to the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD).

After more than 35 years of oil and gas production on the Norwegian continental shelf, NPD estimates 65 percent of the region’s resources have yet to be tapped and a quarter have yet to be discovered. Current production and exploration activities are concentrated in the North Sea and Norwegian Sea. But oil and gas fields in these areas are maturing and production is beginning to decline. This has led companies to set their sights on Norway’s Arctic territory. “We expect one-third of future petroleum potential to be within the Barents Sea,” says geologist Bente Nyland, NPD’s director general. Compared to the heavily explored North Sea and Norwegian Sea, the Barents Sea is “virgin area,” and the last place left to find a major oil or gas discovery in Norway, she says.

Read the rest of the article on Norway. Other countries featured include India, Libya, the South China sea, and Iraq.