Global oil, gas fields, sizes tallied, analyzed

Oil company explorationists and government planners concerned with future oil and gas supplies need realistic numbers on the sizes and distribution of known fields to help compare regions and estimate what sizes of fields may still be expected in any nation or oil province.

Clearly regional summaries ate not substitutes for details on individual countries or basins when evaluating the local prospectivity of any area or oil province, each of which must be appraised on its own merits. For example, Latin American prospectivity ranges from that of superoily Venezuela to still nonoily Paraguay.

The authors hope that publication of these regional summaries will encourage others to release similar and more detailed data on individual nations and basins.

The world had about 41,164 known oil fields as of Dec. 31, 1989, of which 31,385 were located in the U.S. and 9,779 in the rest of the world.

Oil fields are not created equal. There are many tiny fields and few big ones. The large fields are by far the more important for global oil supplies...

Published in: Oil and Gas Journal, Volume 91, Issue 7, 16 Feb 1993
Available from: Oil & Gas Journal