Barents Sea - frontier drilling in 2017
The Barents Sea to the north of Norway is estimated to contain almost half of the recoverable undiscovered resources remaining in the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS). At present only two fields, Statoil’s Snøhvit and Eni’s Goliat, are in production but a number of discoveries since 2011 have the potential to be stand-alone developments and are currently being appraised. The recent 23rd licensing round awarded acreage exclusively in the Barents and for the first time included the frontier South East Barents. Statoil has already indicated that it plans to drill the high-risk/high-reward Korpfjell prospect located in PL859 in this frontier area as part of a five to seven well Barents exploration programme in 2017.
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Reserves - better not blink or they could be gone
In a week of carnage among the UK listed E&P mid-caps, one of the more puzzling big fallers is Soco International. At the time of writing the stock is down nearly 40% from the start of the week as investors get to grips with a spectacular drop in 2P reserves, from 130mmboe to 41mmboe. However, this reeks of a potential over-reaction and a lack of understanding among much of the analyst community as to what reserves actually mean. We therefore think it is worth considering in this post what companies and independents auditors actually mean by the simple words “reserves”.
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