23-01-04 Major oil companies appear to have been significantly less successful at discovering petroleum than recent regulatory filings suggest, citing a new report by energy consultant Wood Mackenzie.
The report paints a dismal picture of the oil industry's recent exploration performance. It also raises questions about the usefulness of the Securities and Exchange Commission's guidelines for reporting reserve estimates at a time when those numbers already are under scrutiny after Shell Group slashed its tally of oil and natural-gas reserves by 20 % earlier this month.

Wood Mackenzie calculated that the combined discoveries of the 10 largest Western oil companies, which include ExxonMobil, BP and Shell, rose steadily from 1997 to 2000, peaking that year at about 13.05 bn barrels. Discoveries then fell sharply to just 4.02 bn barrels in 2001 and 3.34 bn barrels in 2002. The study didn't examine the performance of individual companies, but rather looked at the top 10 companies -- by market capitalization -- as a group.
That's not to say the world is running out of oil. Many of the most prodigious deposits of oil are in the Middle East, which is still largely closed to international oil companies. But other regions have been picked through during decades of exploration, making big new finds difficult.

Despite the finding of sharp declines in discoveries, the 10 oil companies' SEC filings reported steady additions to their reserves as a group in 1997 to 2002 -- in the range of 8 bn to 10.5 bn boe each year.