Discoveries of giants, which make up roughly half the world’s oil and gas reserves, have declined since the 1970s. No one argues about that, says Mann. The decline has led some experts to predict that oil and gas will run out in the next few decades.
Paul Mann conducting field work in Nicaragua, May 2007Mann says his team’s mapping and tabulation of fields helps to show how these trends are evolving decade by decade and how improving technologies like 3D seismic data are impacting the hunt.
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There are 932 giants on our giants map at the moment,” he says. “Working with Ian Cross, our collaborator at the Global Petroleum Information department of IHS, we are always adding new ones and classifying their tectonic settings. We greatly appreciate Ian’s collaboration since he keeps us up to date with the latest discovery information from the industry.”
Of particular interest in their compilation are the new giants that are discovered in areas with no previous track record of giants. These are the potential cluster areas of the future since favorably large source and reservoir potential exists. Some examples of these new emerging clusters are the deepwater area of the Bay of Bengal (both eastern India and Myanmar), the Ordos and Tarim basins of western China, the Mekong delta of Viet Nam, the Sudan rift of Africa, and the deepwater area of northern Australia. In all of these areas, geoscientists are working feverishly to define the size and limits of the cluster. The larger the cluster area, the better the outlook.
