Looking Ahead

In the past four years we have found five new fields larger than 500 million barrels. That's a lot of oil. Well yes it is. But in the big scheme of things those fields don't account for much. Globally we use close to a hundred million barrels a day. So a half billion barrel field will only last humanity a week. So as fields age and dry the new ones we bring online are less and less plentiful. Long gone are the new hundred billion barrel fields. Those are already tapped. It is now a case of diminishing returns.
The new field found offshore of Guyana is exciting. At 800-1400 million barrels it is a huge new find. One that will cost almost twenty billion to bring online though. At current prices the entire field is only worth forty billion. Not quite the gold mine is seems at first glance.