US raises reserve estimate in Gulf of Mexico
The US federal government on September 9 updated its estimate for reserves for the Gulf of Mexico, revising both oil and natural gas estimates higher.
The assessment is current to December 2019.
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Some of the fields in the Gulf of Mexico have matured or expired since original discoveries were made. For the 414 active fields, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) put the reserve estimate at 4.65bn barrels of oil and 190.0 trillion ft3 of natural gas.
“Oil reserves have increased 35.2% and the gas reserves have increased 7.0% since the 2018 report,” BOEM said. “These increases are the result of six new fields being added during the reporting period.”
Hurricane Ida, which made landfall as a category 4 storm on August 29, has left an impact on gulf production. The government estimated that about 77% of both crude oil and natural gas production remains offline.
That represents about 1.4mn b/d of oil and 1.7bn ft3/d of natural gas, rivalling the outages left behind by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.