Mature areas dominate acreage on offer in Q3 2018

GlobalData’s latest report, ‘Q3 2018 Global Bid Round Outlook – Mature Areas Dominate Acreage on Offer in the Quarter’, shows that globally, seven bid rounds are due to close in the third quarter of 2018 – one each in the US, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Norway, Sierra Leone and Brazil. These are –

·         Lease Sale 251, US

·         APA 2018, Norway

·         2018 Conventional Regular Tender Round -1, Indonesia

·         Petronas Licensing Round 2018, Malaysia

·         4th Offshore Licensing Round 2018, Sierra Leone

·         5th Production Sharing Round, Brazil

·         2018 Petroleum Bidding Round, Thailand

A total of 15,317 blocks are on offer globally in Q3 2018. Of these, 5,940 are ultra-deepwater, 5,781 are shallow water blocks, and 3,587 are deepwater blocks. Nine onshore blocks are also on offer.

Blocks on offer by bid round and terrain

Source: Upstream Analytics, GlobalData Oil and Gas. © GlobalData

The ‘Lease Sale 251’ round in the US offers 14,620 blocks, the highest among all the bid rounds due to close in Q3 2018, followed by the ‘APA 2018’ in Norway with 658 blocks and the ‘2018 Conventional Regular Tender Round -1’ round in Indonesia with 19 blocks.

Most of the acreage available in the quarter is offered in the more mature areas of the US, Norway, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. The ‘Lease Sale 251’ round in the US has the highest acreage on offer of all the rounds in Q3 2018, with 312,171km².