Discovered, recoverable oil resources worldwide grew by five billion barrels over the past year, despite 30.1 billion barrels of production in 2024, Rystad Energy has reported.
“This net increase was driven primarily by the delineation of upside potential in Argentina’s Vaca Muerta play and the Permian Delaware basin in Texas and New Mexico”, the Oslo-based energy research company said.
“Global recoverable oil resources, including estimates for undiscovered fields, stabilized at approximately 1.5 trillion barrels”.
Last year, approved developments amounted to 12.3 billion barrels, while new discoveries added 1.8 billion barrels of probable and proven reserves, according to Rystad.
It expects reserve replacements from new conventional oil projects to be less than 30 percent of output over the next five years, while exploration would replace about 10 percent.
“The most significant revision over the last 10 years has been in yet-to-find resources, where our projection has been reduced by 456 billion barrels”, Rystad said. “This is due to a steep decline in frontier exploration, unsuccessful shale developments outside the Americas and a doubling in offshore costs over the past five years”.
Current proven oil reserves would only take 14 years of production, it said. “If future global oil demand increases, as forecast by OPEC, supply will likely struggle to meet demand, even at attractive, high prices for producers”, Rystad warned. “However, if the energy transition continues to make inroads, future oil demand is expected to fall, particularly with the greater electrification of transport vehicles, as seen in China”.
Rystad chief analyst Per Magnus Nysveen said, “Full extraction of these oil resources will require oil prices stabilizing at higher levels and further estimate increases will require new technologies to lower production costs. Over the next decades, the capital needed will likely not be available to meet continuously increasing oil demand, service prices could skyrocket, and there will likely be limited appetite for innovations to sustain such high emissions from oil”.
Artem Abramov, Rystad deputy head of analysis, said, “In a world with flat or growing demand after 2030, another oil super-cycle would be needed. This scenario would require a substantial increase in frontier exploration and drilling success as well as accelerated deployment of secondary recovery and full-scale development of non-core shale plays in North America and globally”.
Rystad does not see oil demand continuing to grow steeply toward 2050.
“[T]he worst-case warming scenarios evaluated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will not materialize… future CO2 emissions from fossil fuels will be limited to 2,000 gigatons of carbon dioxide (GtCO2), of which 900 Gt will come from coal, 600 Gt from oil and 500 Gt from natural gas and natural gas liquids”, Rystad said. “This is 500 Gt less CO2 than the IPCC’s mid-scenario, which leads to 2.8 degrees Celsius of warming”.
To contact the author, email jov.onsat@rigzone.com
What do you think? We’d love to hear from you, join the conversation on the
Rigzone Energy Network.
The Rigzone Energy Network is a new social experience created for you and all energy professionals to Speak Up about our industry, share knowledge, connect with peers and industry insiders and engage in a professional community that will empower your career in energy.
element
var scriptTag = document.createElement(‘script’);
scriptTag.src = url;
scriptTag.async = true;
scriptTag.onload = implementationCode;
scriptTag.onreadystatechange = implementationCode;
location.appendChild(scriptTag);
};
var div = document.getElementById(‘rigzonelogo’);
div.innerHTML += ” +
‘
‘ +
”;
var initJobSearch = function () {
//console.log(“call back”);
}
var addMetaPixel = function () {
if (-1 > -1 || -1 > -1) {
/*Meta Pixel Code*/
!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)
{if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?
n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};
if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version=’2.0′;
n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;
t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,’script’,
‘https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js’);
fbq(‘init’, ‘1517407191885185’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘PageView’);
/*End Meta Pixel Code*/
} else if (0 > -1 && 97 > -1)
{
/*Meta Pixel Code*/
!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)
{if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?
n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};
if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version=’2.0′;
n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;
t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,’script’,
‘https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js’);
fbq(‘init’, ‘1517407191885185’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘PageView’);
/*End Meta Pixel Code*/
}
}
// function gtmFunctionForLayout()
// {
//loadJS(“https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=G-K6ZDLWV6VX”, initJobSearch, document.body);
//}
// window.onload = (e => {
// setTimeout(
// function () {
// document.addEventListener(“DOMContentLoaded”, function () {
// // Select all anchor elements with class ‘ui-tabs-anchor’
// const anchors = document.querySelectorAll(‘a .ui-tabs-anchor’);
// // Loop through each anchor and remove the role attribute if it is set to “presentation”
// anchors.forEach(anchor => {
// if (anchor.getAttribute(‘role’) === ‘presentation’) {
// anchor.removeAttribute(‘role’);
// }
// });
// });
// }
// , 200);
//});
