Three or four oil discoveries around the world in the past two months have suddenly changed the reporting on energy.
Two new big finds offshore Brazil (others have been known for two years), a so-called mega find in very deep ground in the Gulf of Mexico and another highly prospective find that could run for 1,000 kilometres or more offshore West Africa.
All discoveries are in very difficult ground, in deep water and at depth under the ocean floor.
BP made the strike in the Gulf of Mexico (BHP Billiton is producing oil from wells in shallower water), Woodside is involved in the West African strike and BG Group, which has coal seam methane interests in Queensland (where it took over Queensland Gas Co), has a big stake in some of the Brazilian finds.
Some offshore Brazil are under molten, moving salt domes hundreds of kilometres long and kilometres thick, but all have wetted the appetites of oil companies and investors here, in the US, Brazil and the UK.
Woodside Petroleum has a connection in the latest, the new discovery off the west African coast.
It’s a partner with US oil and gas independent, Andarko Petroleum Corporation, along with Spanish oil major Repsol and UK independent Tullow, which has a stake in the newly emerging oil fields of Uganda (Where the now taken over Australian group, Hardman resources had a stake)..
Woodside Petroleum owns 25 % of the project, Andarko owns 40%, Repsol 25% and Tullow 10%. Repsol has a stake in the offshore Brazilian finds.
"The Venus B-1 well was drilled to a total depth of approximately 18,500 feet in about 5,900 feet of water and encountered more than 45 net feet of hydrocarbon pay," the Andarko announcement said.
"Venus is the first deepwater test in the Sierra Leone-Liberian Basin."
Andarko’s senior vice president Bob Daniels said in a statement there were bookends established spanning about 1,100 kilometres .
"The Venus discovery confirms the existence of an active petroleum system in the basin and enhances the prospectivity of our vast West Africa acreage position," he said.
"With Jubilee on the east and Venus on the west, we have established bookends spanning approximately 1,100 kilometers (700 miles) across two of the most exciting and highly prospective basins in the world.
"Anadarko and our partners are evaluating the initial results of the well and the forward plan for the prospect, and anticipate additional drilling in the area.
“We are optimistic that the continued success of our West African Cretaceous program will create substantial value for our stakeholders as well as the people of West Africa through continued investment and increased activity. Anadarko plans to drill two to five wells in the trend next year."
The Venus prospect is one of Anadarko’s more than 30 identified prospects and leads on its West Africa acreage position, which includes interests in almost 8 million acres across 10 blocks offshore Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana. The next well will be off the Cote d’Ivoire.
Woodside said that "Of the other acreage referred to in Anadarko’s media release. Woodside holds a 25% interest in block SL7 offshore Sierra Leone and a 17.5% interest in blocks L-15, L-16 and L-17 offshore Liberia."
The Financial Times talked up the discovery ahead of its confirmation
The paper said the prospects of the area had improved "because Venus-B lies off the shores of Sierra Leone and is at the western edge of a geological system that includes the large discoveries off Ghana’s shores.
"The Venus well does not prove that the area is full of oil, but it makes it more likely and will sharpen bigger companies’ interests."
"The discovery will also be news to the governments of Ivory Coast, Liberia and Sierra Leone, none of which are big oil producers.
“But they have watched Ghana leap from being a cocoa exporter with no oil to a country expected to become one of the world’s top-50 oil producers when the Jubilee field begins to pump next year.
"The Jubilee field is Africa’s largest deep water field and is thought to hold as many as 2bn barrels of oil, while the coastline could increase that," the FT reported..
BG and Repsol’s involvement offshore Brazil, have grabbed the attention of the world’s oil industry, but these are immensely difficult, very expensive discoveries that will cost tens of billions of dollars to develop (More than the cost of Gorgon in WA).
BG last week revealed its second big discovery in a fortnight.
The find is in the Santos region offshore southern Brazil . Its size isn’t known, but the earlier discovery was estimated at one to 1.2 billion barrels of recoverable oil and gas.
BG said it was the eight discovery in three years offshore Brazil.
State-run Brazilian oil group, Petrobras, BG and Spain’s Repsol are the holders of interest of varying size in the discoveries.
The latest discovery is approximately almost 300 kilometres off the coast of the state of São Paulo, where water depth is 2,160 metres.
No one quite knows the size of the discoveries offshore Brazil, but judging by the reforms to the country’s oil exploration and production regimes by the national
