Overall,
the U.S. Geological Survey results of Central and South America
show that four offshore total petroleum systems are estimated to
contain more than a mean three billion barrels of undiscovered oil,
including systems in the Guyana-Suriname, Campos, Santos and Falklands
Plateau.
These four
offshore total petroleum systems account for more than half of the
total undiscovered oil resources in the Central America, South America
and Caribbean region.
Four onshore
total petroleum systems are estimated to contain over three billion
barrels of undiscovered resource at the mean. These include the
East Venezuela, Maracaibo, Llanos and Putumayo-Oriente-Maranon.
Together
these eight systems contain 83 percent of the total mean undiscovered
oil resource for the region.
Mean undiscovered
gas resources in the region are broken down by associated gas and
non-associated gas. Five total petroleum systems account for 70
percent of the undiscovered associated gas. These include the Guyana-Suriname,
Campos, Santos, East Venezuela and Maracaibo basins.
For non-associated
gas total petroleum systems in seven provinces, including the Foz
do Amazonas, Espirito Santo, Santos, Pelotas, Santa Cruz-Tarija,
East Venezuela and the Tobago Trough, contain 74 percent of the
undiscovered resource.
The East
Venezuela Basin is estimated to contain 23 percent of all undiscovered
non-associated gas, and more than half of this total is offshore
Trinidad in the Columbus Basin and the Orinoco offshore.
Fifteen
assessment units are anticipated to contain undiscovered giant oil
fields of more than 500 million barrels of oil — and 12 of that
total are entirely offshore and 11 are either hypothetical or frontier
with respect to known petroleum provinces.
Ten assessment
units are believed to contain undiscovered giant gas fields with
greater than three trillion cubic feet of gas. Again, the vast majority
of these assessment units are offshore and either hypothetical or
frontier with respect to known petroleum accumulations, according
to the USGS.
"Central
and South America will continue to be an important oil and gas producing
region for the next several decades," said Christopher Schenk
of the USGS. "Future exploration of the undiscovered oil resource
in the region will increasingly move offshore and natural gas utilization
is increasing dramatically in South America, making the undiscovered
natural gas potential an important future resource."