An Open Arctic and its Impact on Oil Drilling
William Cho, Head of MatthewsDaniel Weather, a division of the Bureau Veritas Group, explains why improvements in drilling technologies and weather monitoring systems have made offshore shelf drilling operations in the Arctic Circle increasingly attractive to upstream oil and gas companies and their investors. Rising crude oil prices motivate not only technological innovators to explore cheaper alternative energy sources, such as solar panels and wind turbines, but also upstream oil and gas companies to explore new oil reserves which had not otherwise been economical.
Norsk Hydro Strikes Oil, Natural Gas Reserves off Norway
Norsk Hydro ASA struck oil and natural gas reserves off the western Norway city of Bergen, reports said. The directorate described the strike as minor though no estimate was given for the size of the find. It said field partners may link the oil and gas reserve to existing production facilities at the nearby Fram field, also operated by Norsk Hydro. The Norwegian government has encouraged oil companies to look for small finds near producing offshore fields to maintain the oil flows that make the Nordic country a major oil exporter. Linking new discoveries to existing platforms sharply reduces development costs. Source: Canada East
Petrobas Confirms Oil Well Discovery
Brazil's state-owned Petrobras confirmed the discovery of a significant amount of light oil in the Santos Basin. The confirmation was made after the company conducted tests in a vertical well and detected a flow of 4,900 barrels of oil and 150,000 cubic meters of natural gas per day. The highly productive reservoir was found under a 2,000-meter thick layer of salt, also known as pre-salt. Petrobras said it would make further investigations to determine the total oil and gas reserve of the well. According to experts, a reservoir that lies underneath a layer of pre-salt is commercially viable if its total capacity exceeds 700 million barrels.
