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- Around 120 discoveries were made in 2024, but most were small, unlike major finds in previous years.
- High-impact drilling is expected in Suriname (Korikori), Cyprus (Elektra), Libya (Area C), and South Africa (DWOB).
- Oil majors like Chevron, ExxonMobil, and TotalEnergies are leading the charge in new and existing frontier basins.
The global oil industry saw approximately 120 oil and gas discoveries in 2024, the overwhelming majority of which were small incremental reserve additions. This stands in contrast with the previous years when the 2022 discovery of Venus in Namibia, followed by the 2023 Mopane find in the same country, instilled hope in the global upstream community that multi-billion-barrel discoveries are still possible. Last year, it was only Kuwait’s al-Nokhatha that fit that description, and it could very well happen that the largest 2025 find would once again take place in Kuwait’s offshore. Now let’s look at the hottest exploration prospects of this year, potentially opening previously untapped frontier areas or simply adding a new twist to already producing basins.
Jazza (Kuwait)
Kuwait’s exploration efforts have been on fire lately. As of this writing, Kuwait does not operate any offshore fields in its territorial waters and has a 50% stake in the Khafji field located in the Neutral Zone. That said, the past two years have seen a string of offshore drilling successes from Kuwait, first with the play-opening discovery of al-Nokhatha (believed to contain some 2 billion barrels of oil) that was subsequently backed up by the al-Julaia find (reserves assessed around 0.8 billion barrels). With Kuwait’s national oil company KOC already dreaming big about bringing the Middle Eastern nation’s production capacity to 4 million b/d, an almost 1.5 million b/d increase compared to current OPEC+-capped output figures, the Jazza prospect could become the crown jewel of recent exploration efforts. The Jazza-1 wildcat is spudded to the southwest of al-Nokhatha, in relative proximity to the disputed Durra gas field, suggesting that a dry well would be very unlikely.
Korikori (Suriname)
US oil major Chevron will be looking forward to a series of high-impact decisions this year. The Chevron-Exxon arbitration regarding Hess’ Guyanese assets will foreshadow its expansion into South America’s new frontiers, whilst its Korikori-1 exploration well could boost that portfolio with a new entry point, Suriname. Suriname’s shallow water remains a terra incognita for oil drillers as the first reflex of oil companies was to appraise the blocks immediately bordering Guyana’s Stabroek license. Following a set of discoveries and even a final investment decision on the 200,000 b/d Gran Morgu project (combining the Sapakara and Krabdagu finds), the time has come for oil firms to look towards shallow water plays. Chevron is set to drill Korikori in Q4 2025, suggesting we will only hear about its commercial qualities by early next year.
Elektra (Cyprus)
Chevron’s much-awaited approval for the $4 billion Aphrodite gas field in offshore Cyprus happens at the right time for other drillers in the Eastern Mediterranean. Suddenly, the option of exporting natural gas to Egypt is a workable scenario that avoids the pitfalls of building costly floating liquefaction terminals. Against this background, ExxonMobil is preparing to drill its Elektra exploration well, potentially the biggest natural gas find of this year with the US major setting estimated pre-drill volumes at 1.7-1.8 bboe. Electra is in the immediate vicinity of Egypt’s Zohr, meaning ample hydrocarbon plays are almost guaranteed, even if their subsequent recoverability might be limited by water influx and reservoir pressure issues. The increasing sophistication of subsea infrastructure would also allow ExxonMobil to tie in any potential Elektra gas production into the existing evacuation system. The Valaris DS-9 drillship started drilling in late January, with results expected towards the end of Q1 2025.
Area C (Libya)
Exploration efforts in Libya have been wrapped in a mystery over the past decade, with European majors Repsol, Eni and TotalEnergies making a gradual comeback to the North African country last year. Whilst most of those upstream activities were taking place in well-established basins such as the coastal Ghadames or Murzuq further inland, Eni is poised to test Libya’s deepwater offshore, for the first time ever. Together with project partner BP, the Matsola-1 well (to be drilled in Q4 2025) could confirm that the onshore Sirte Basin extends into the seas as well. The Libyan Civil War derailed many highly promising offshore projects, including Hess Corp’s 2009 Arous al Bahar gas discovery that was poised to become a frontier-opening gas project. Eni’s drilling is in the immediate vicinity of Hess’ discovery and could well kickstart further appraisal works in the Gulf of Sirte. Libya’s offshore projects have been immune to the country’s notorious power struggles (it’s quite difficult to blockade an offshore platform), with the two main producing fields – Bouri and al-Jurf – remaining operational all throughout the bloody 2011-2020 period.
DWOB (South Africa)
TotalEnergies’ Venus discovery became the largest oil and gas discovery of 2022 and kickstarted a Namibian oil rush in 2023-2024 as everyone wanted to make sure they don’t miss out on the latest exploration frontier. Despite Shell writing down some Namibian discoveries as sub-commercial, the drilling frenzy in Namibian waters is far from over. The same TotalEnergies is now aiming to develop South Africa’s Deep Water Orange Basin (DWOB) block that abuts its Namibian projects across the Orange Basin, hoping that the prolific oil resources of Venus extend southwards. DWOB is relatively far away from the shore, some 200 km or 125 miles, in water depths that mostly range between 1,500 m and 3,000 m. Namibia’s offshore discoveries contained a lot of natural gas – one of the main reasons why Venus will not see commissioning until at least 2029 is the difficulty of marketing the gas – and DWOB would most probably have the same problem. That said, some estimates put the total recoverable resource at 1 boe, which would be a welcome boost to Total’s African portfolio. With the spudding expected to start only in late 2025, we would not see the results of DWOB drilling before 2026.
THE ONES THAT DIDN’T MAKE IT
Whilst Jazza or Korikori could still become the largest oil discovery of 2025, several hydrocarbon prospects are already out of the game, either hitting sub-commercial volumes of oil or not finding any resource at all. A lot of 2024 presumed hotspots turned out to be dry as well, most notably Argentina’s first ever deepwater offshore well, the Argerich-1 drilled by Equinor, as well as Canada’s oft-mulled Persephone wildcat that didn’t yield any hydrocarbons for ExxonMobil. The list of this year’s unsuccessful attempts has so far centered around South Korea and Norway.
Blue Whale (South Korea)
South Korea, a country that has never produced a single barrel of oil and remains notoriously dependent on energy imports, has been abuzz with speculation that its deepwater offshore could finally yield a prolific discovery. President Yoon Suk Yeol, now suspended after a coup attempt, claimed back in the summer of 2024 that South Korea’s offshore waters could hold as much as 14 billion boe of oil and gas. The Daewanggorae prospect, translated as ‘blue whale’ in Korean, was thought to be the most probable prospect to have commercial volumes of hydrocarbons. Following a 45-day drilling campaign that ended in early February, the country’s state oil company was forced to acknowledge that there were no commercial volumes of gas (although they did find traces of natural gas). The government in Seoul has cut KNOC’s budget funding for the exploration drilling campaign, with each wildcats believed to cost some $80 million, therefore the second- and third-rated prospects ‘Squid’ and ‘Pollock’ could take some time to see any development.
Elgol (Norway)
Norway’s Elgol prospect marks yet another attempt to open up the country’s long-overlooked Barents Sea resources and thus maintaining stable gas exports beyond the 2020s. When the license holder Var Energi assessed the quality of the resource in place, the Eni-backed driller hoped to confirm pre-drill resources of at least 265 mmboe, mostly in the form of natural gas with smaller pockets of condensate. In contrast to Jazza or Elektra, exploration drilling at Elgol has already concluded and the results have been underwhelming – the wildcat encountered only a 1.5 m gas column, sapping the tally of recoverable resources to just 3-10 mmboe and prompting Var Energi to declare the prospect sub-commercial. The hunt for Arctic gas is still not over, with Var Energi seeking to spud another frontier exploration well (Zagato) in 2026, however hopes for it to become commercial are much lower now.
By Gerald Jansen for Oilprice.com
The post The Top 5 Oil Exploration Prospects of 2025 appeared first on Energy News Beat.
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