US offshore reserve estimate revised lower
The US government said May 21 its latest estimates of undiscovered offshore reserves show a 24% decline in oil and 30% decline for natural gas compared with 2016 levels.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) provided its most recent assessment of undiscovered, technically and economically recoverable oil and natural gas resources outside of known oil and gas fields on the Outer Continental Shelf.
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Using data to January 1, 2019, the BOEM estimated the total undiscovered technically recoverable resources (UTRR) at a mean 68.79bn barrels of oil and a mean 229.03 trillion ft3 of natural gas. Compared to its 2016, BOEM’s estimate represents a 21.76bn barrel decline for oil and a 98.55 trillion ft3 decline for natural gas.
The UTRR for the Gulf of Mexico was 29.59bn b, a 38% decline from the previous assessment. For natural gas, the estimate of 54.84 trillion ft3 marked a 61% drop from 2016 levels.
For the Atlantic, the BOEM estimate of 4.31bn barrels of oil and 34.09 trillion ft3 of natural gas represents a 10% decline from the previous assessments.
In the Pacific, the UTRR estimate of 10.2bn barrels of oil and 16.07 trillion ft3 of natural gas was relatively unchanged compared to the previous assessment.
Off Alaska, the estimate for oil was 46.75bn barrels of oil and 124.03 trillion ft3 of natural gas. Rather than use percentage, BOEM only stated that the UTRR for Alaska was 3.95bn barrels of oil equivalent lower than estimated in the 2016 report. Most of the estimated decline was from the Beaufort Sea.
BOEM estimates that most of the potential reserves, about 43%, are offshore Alaska.
“After more than 60 years of OCS exploration and development, BOEM estimates that greater than 60% of OCS resources remain undiscovered,” the bureau said. “Approximately 33% have been produced, with 3% remaining as discovered reserves.”
President Joe Biden in executive order 13990 reinstated protections enacted by former president Barack Obama that barred exploration and production activity in federal waters. In one of his last acts of office, Obama in 2016 designated the vast majority of US waters in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas as "indefinitely off limits to offshore oil and gas leasing." The Canadian government mirrored much of that legislation.