Big oil and gas finds in northern Europe

EurActiv ^ | Published 10 January 2012 | Updated 11 January 2012 | (EurActiv.com with Reuters)

[Olog-hai]

Norway’s Statoil has made a second big oil discovery in the Barents Sea in less than a year and predicted more discoveries to come in the region.

The new oil find, called Havis, may hold between 200 million and 300 million barrels of oil equivalent (BOE). The new find combined with the previous and nearby discovery, Skrugard, could provide between 400 million and 600 million BOE, Statoil said yesterday (9 January).

"This is extremely positive," said John Olaisen, an analyst at the Carnegie investment banking firm in Oslo. "This is an important strategic asset in a new oil region, so this is very good ... One could expect more oil finds in the region after this."

A Shell and ExxonMobil joint venture, Nam, has also announced what it says is the largest on-shore gas field discovery in the Netherlands since 1995, near Ee, in Friesland.

Production at the South Metslawier site, which is estimated to hold 4 billion cubic meters (141 billion cubic feet) of reserves, is expected to begin in the summer, and last until 2015.

The Norwegian find in the Barents Sea followed a carve-up of the territory in 2010 between Norway and Russia.

The Arctic region holds 25% of the world’s hydrocarbons, according to the US Geological Survey. …

[count-your-change]

Obvious evidence of “peak oil”.

[JDW11235]

Ah yes, “Peak oil,” the cousin to global warming, based on pseudoscience and a lot of make believe. I suspect that it’s not even possible to run out of oil (like water), merely that we’ll have a really difficult time getting to it.

[C210N]

I’m sure these European oil finds will be managed, drilled, and exploited well over the next 20 years by their new moslim overlords, as their hoards invade and conquer Europe.

[saganite]

A hundred million barrels here, a few hundred million barrels there. Pretty soon you’re talking about real oil.

[Recon Dad]

See below.... this was from December as I recall. They’re starting all over again in the North Sea.

With relatively little fanfare on the international stage, Lundin Petroleum and Statoil (and partners) have just recently jointly discovered one of the largest oil fields ever found in the North Sea. The Aldous Major South - Avaldsnes discovery on the Utsira High structure is currently estimated to contain 1.7 to 3.3 billion barrels of recoverable oil. The astonishing thing about this discovery is that it has lain undiscovered in a mature oil province for so long providing ample encouragement for explorers to go on exploring.

[saganite]

Interesting. I wonder if the oil companies were just sitting on it until the other fields were pumped out or maybe extraction of this newly discovered oil will be more difficult. Good news in any case.

[epithermal]

All right, at the rate of world oil consumption that is about 2 or 3 days supply of oil.

[airborne]

All right, at the rate of world oil consumption that is about 2 or 3 days supply of oil.

And besides, it will takes years until we ever see anything from those wells, so why even drill?

(liberal enviro-nazi logic)

[Recon Dad]

What I think you're seeing all over the world is new exploration methods. The application of these methods have allowed the drilling to cut the number of dry holes substantially.

Also there's been some major rethinking on the part of geologists on what were considered gospel, see below.

For decades geologists and geophysicists have assumed that convection occurs within the Earth's mantle. But according to Herndon’s discovery, Earth-mantle convection is physically impossible. As he explains in his paper, the mantle is compressed by its own weight and the weight of the crust, so that its bottom is about 62% more dense than the top. The negligible amount of thermal expansion that might occur at the bottom, less than 1%, cannot cause bottom-mantle matter to float to the surface or make the mantle top-heavy, necessary conditions for convection.
Herndon’s discovery has revolutionary implications for geologists, who have for decades misapplied mathematical convection-justification relationships to the gravity-compressed mantle; such relationships are only valid for incompressible fluids.

[TheOldLady]

Boop Their Tiny Tamarin Tootsies!

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[epithermal]

You miss my point. I used to work in the oil industry exploring for oil and gas, so when I see people getting excited about a few hundred million barrels I try to put some perspective on it. If people want to deny that the easy oil has mostly been found in the world, then ignorance is bliss.

I am all for drilling for oil, building the Keystone pipeline, and fracing. But my years of experience exploring for new oil reserves gives me the insight that the giant oil fields needed to feed the demand are getting rare and a few hundred million barrels is a drop in the ocean.