A battle against shrinking reserves

BP and its biggest competitors must find fields the size of the North Sea every 18 months just to stop their reserves from shrinking. That task is becoming increasingly difficult. The boost they enjoyed from new technology in the 1990s, which allowed the majors to venture into the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, west Africa and Brazil, has begun to subside.
Nevertheless, more than two-thirds of the discoveries made in 2002 and 2003 were in these regions. They took up more than one of every Dollars 2 spent on exploration, according to Andrew Latham, analyst at Wood Mackenzie, the independent Edinburgh-based consultants. Production in the coming years also will be focused around the three areas. West Africa, which includes Angola, Nigeria and to a lesser extent Equatorial Guinea, is expected to add about 1.5 mm bpd to the world's output in the next five years, while Brazil contributes 1 mm.

The companies best placed to take advantage of this are ExxonMobil, the world's largest listed oil company, which is present in all three west African countries, and Shell, the Anglo/Dutch energy group, and ChevronTexaco, of the US, which are present in at least one. Brazil remains in large part the playground of the national company, Petrobras. Most of the majors have a presence in the Gulf of Mexico.
Last year, BP was ahead of the pack in adding oil reserves by buying them. The UK-based energy group struck Russia's biggest corporate deal last year, with TNK, and boosted its reserves by 4 bn barrels.

Meanwhile, the Middle East, which looked like a promising place to acquire reserves in 2003, turned out to be a disappointment. Companies are turning to more difficult areas, such as natural gas fields far from the markets they will serve, and heavy crude oil, which is expensive and environmentally controversial.
In the past three years, oil companies have discovered less than half the reserves found between 1998 and 2000. If one sees an oil company's reserves as a measure of its health -- as many do -- the industry is ill, with high oil prices masking the problem.