China Petroleum Chemical Co petroleum exploration and Development Research Institute

First, the global investment in exploration in the last ten years has been growing at a stage

For nearly ten years, the name of the global upstream exploration investment (Exploration Investment in Nominal terms) showed a rapid growth trend, from $22 billion 500 million in 2002 to $96 billion 200 million in 2012, an average annual increase of 15.6%; the 2004-2008 is a continuous growth peak, average annual increase of 25.87%. But excluding inflation factors, the Exploration Investment in Real terms increased slowly from 22 billion 100 million in 2002 to 43 billion in 2012, with an average annual growth rate of 6.9%. It is worth noting that, in 2006, 2007 and 2008 in the era of high oil prices, the nominal upstream exploration investment grew by 36%, 20% and 20%, while the actual exploration investment only increased by 3.6%, 0.8% and 2.6%, this is mainly due to high oil prices during the period of the oil industry cost inflation higher, leading to artificially high nominal investment exploration.

Two. The growth of new exploration oil and gas reserves lagged behind the actual exploration investment

Oil and gas exploration is a kind of production and management activities with high risk, long period and slow efficiency. In the past 2002-2012 years, the average annual growth of new oil and gas reserves increased by 5.4%, slightly lower than the average annual growth rate of the actual exploration investment (6.9%). Moreover, the fast growth period of new oil and gas reserves lagged behind the rapid growth period of actual exploration investment.

As can be seen in 2001-2012, obtained the exploration effectiveness needs to be 5 to 6 years from the global exploration investment growth to: 2002-2007 is the actual exploration investment continued to increase, from $22 billion 100 million in 2002 to $32 billion 100 million in 2007, an average annual increase of 7.4% over the same period, but the exploration of new reserves remained stable, even slightly decreased.

After 2008, the new reserves increased significantly. The actual exploration investment in the early stage began to take effect, from 13 billion 900 million barrels of oil equivalent in 2008 to 23 billion 200 million barrels of oil equivalent in 2012, with an average annual growth rate of 13.5%. The delayed effect of exploration investment has confirmed the characteristics of offshore oil and gas discovery in the past ten years and the long cycle of offshore exploration and discovery.

In view of the lagging characteristics found in oil and gas exploration, oil companies must pay attention to the development of upstream investment plans, ensure stable and sustained growth of actual exploration inputs, and provide guarantee for acquiring new reserves with low cost and high quality exploration.

By three, the new technology makes the global real reserves cost steadily

1. over the past ten years, the actual oil and gas reserves found in the world is slightly higher

The cost of finding reserves is an important index to measure the effective capacity of oil companies to acquire oil and gas resources. It usually refers to the cost of proving the reserves of a barrel oil equivalent through exploration activities. It reflects the efficiency of exploration fund of oil companies, which can be expressed as:

Reserve discovery cost = total exploration investment per year / new confirmed oil and gas reserves in the year of exploration

The "total exploration investment in the current year" does not include the cost of purchasing unconfirmed reserves (or resources), and is limited to the investment of the company's exploration activities in the current year. It truly reflects the ability of oil companies to obtain oil and gas reserves through simple exploration activities (or pure discovery costs).

Global oil and gas reserves in nominal 2002-2012 (Finding Cost in Nominal found that the cost of terms) increased rapidly, in general and stabilization of the first and then decreased. From $1.64 / barrel oil equivalent in 2002 to $4.15 / barrel oil equivalent in 2012, the average growth rate of ten years was 9.7%.

After excluding inflation, the actual Finding Cost in Real terms in the past ten years has been flat, rising from the US $1.61 / barrel equivalent in 2002 to 1.86 US $/ barrel oil equivalent in 2012, and the average annual increase is only 1.5% in ten years. More clearly, the nominal cost of discovery increased by 221% in 2001-2008 years, while the actual cost of the same period increased only by 48%. This is mainly due to the high level of cost inflation in the oil industry in 2005-2008 years, which has led to the nominal cost of discovery in the global oil and gas reserves in the last ten years.

2. higher exploration level leads to higher cost of reserve discovery

Review of the world more than one hundred years (1921-2012 years) in the exploration process, the law is with the exploration degree, found that smaller scale and difficult exploration, found that the average size of the global oil and gas reserves showed a decreasing trend, decreased from an average of 806 million barrels of oil equivalent in 1921-1940 to an average of 59 million barrels of oil equivalent in 2001-2012. Similar declining trends have also emerged in the deep water field. The decreasing trend of the average reserves of oil and gas will inevitably lead to the gradual increase in the discovery cost of the oil and gas reserves.

At the same time, with the increasingly complex geomorphic conditions of oil and gas exploration, the proportion of complex surface, such as desert, high mountain, deep water and bush jungle, is increasing year by year. The proportion of deep water and desert increased from 27.3% in 1983-1992 years to 73.1% in 2003-2012 years in the new oil and gas reserves in the global exploration. It is clear that the increasingly complex geological and geomorphic conditions of the exploration targets will undoubtedly increase the discovery cost of the oil and gas reserves.

3. application of new exploration technology reduces the cost of discovery of oil and gas reserves

Since the beginning of the last century, since the record of statistical drilling, the success rate of the global exploration well shows a trend of decreasing and rising first, and its turning point is around 1950. 1900-1950, oil and gas exploration activities in the early, on the number of wells less (annual wildcatting only 277), the application of basic no new exploration technology of large-scale global exploration success rate with the deepening exploration decreased by the beginning of last century 30.3% gradually decreased to 15.7% in 50s.

After the 50s of last century, with the two-dimensional seismic technology, three-dimensional seismic technology,