According to Wood Mackenzie’s latest upstream outlook, there are nearly 1.4 trillion barrels of oil equivalent (boe) reserves in conventional undeveloped oil and gas fields around the globe. This includes nearly 1.1 trillion boe of ‘technical reserves’ – a term Wood Mackenzie uses for reserves for which there are no firm development plans in place.
“Over half of these discoveries which we classify as ‘good technicals’, are potentially economic under our current price assumptions. These have an indicative collective value of USD 760B”, explains David Highton, Principal Analyst of Upstream Research at Wood Mackenzie.
The region with the most valuable portfolio of good technicals overall is the Middle East, followed closely by Latin America and North America. “The massive undeveloped resources of the Middle East (367B boe) lead the way,” notes Highton. “These include the undeveloped volumes in the super-giant North/South Pars gas field which extends between Qatar and Iran in the Persian Gulf. Combining both countries’ share, this is the largest single technical reserve in the world.”
There are also around 300B boe of undeveloped commercial reserves that should be brought onstream in the next ten years or so according to Wood Mackenzie’s outlook.
