Depth and Nature of Giant Petroleum Discoveries Through Time as an Indicator of Resource Depletion

Summary A striking increase of the depth of giant petroleum discoveries in the past 15 years coincides with a shift to discoveries in subsalt plays that require more challenging exploration and drilling. Technological advances have facilitated these changes, but technological advances alone could no...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of industrial ecology 2013-06, Vol.17 (3), p.345-351
Main Author: Railsback, L. Bruce
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animal, plant and microbial ecology
Applied ecology
Biological and medical sciences
drilling
Economic systems
energy
Environment and sustainable development
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
industrial ecology
natural gas
Natural resource management
Natural resources
oil
Oil demand
Oil exploration
Resource depletion
resource flows
Studies
Sustainable development
Technological change
Time series
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Summary:Summary A striking increase of the depth of giant petroleum discoveries in the past 15 years coincides with a shift to discoveries in subsalt plays that require more challenging exploration and drilling. Technological advances have facilitated these changes, but technological advances alone could not have induced these changes in petroleum exploration on a planet in which shallow and less challenging targets remained in abundance like that of previous decades. Instead, the trends toward greater discovery depths and more challenging plays suggest that most of the conventional petroleum accumulations of the kind that fueled the global economic system of the 1900s have already been found.
ISSN:1088-1980
1530-9290
DOI:10.1111/j.1530-9290.2012.00524.x