Oil Reserves Fall ?11 Jul 2023 17:35
International proved crude oil and natural gas reserves held by 187 publicly traded global exploration and production (E&P) companies declined by 5.6 billion barrels of oil equivalent (BOE) in 2022, or 2%, according to data from the companies’ annual financial reports. In 2020, proved reserves held by these public companies had dropped by 9% due primarily to the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, but in 2021, proved reserves increased by 9% from 2020.
Proved reserves are estimated volumes of hydrocarbon resources that an analysis of geologic and engineering data demonstrates with reasonable certainty are recoverable under existing economic and operating conditions. Company assessments of their proved reserves of crude oil and natural gas change from year to year because of revisions to existing reserves resulting from price changes, extensions and discoveries of new resources, purchases and sales of proved reserves, and production.
The decline in these companies’ proved reserves in 2022 was driven primarily by sales of producing properties in response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In 2022, some large oil companies, including bp and TotalEnergies, divested from Russia. Those divestments, categorized as sales of property in the data, reduced total proved reserves reported by these E&P companies by 12.0 billion BOE in 2022.
In 2022, additions to these companies’ proved reserves of 16.2 billion BOE, producing property purchases of 8.2 billion BOE, and upward revisions of 2.8 billion BOE were not enough to cover the larger decreases in proved reserves from the combination of more property sales than usual and normal production.
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