Oil and gas are finite, depletable resources. Large fields are yet being discovered, but with much less frequency than in the earlier days of exploration. These two bits of geological reality do not, however, translate to the demise of petroleum geology, but they do signal change. That change, in the U.S. Lower 48 and in many of the more extensively explored provinces worldwide, is to small field exploration and large field exploitation. Indeed the change is already here and is showing positive trends despite the prevailing gloom.

For the past 25 years in the U.S. Lower 48, 98 percent of the fields discovered have been one million BOE or less and account for one-half the total volume of oil and gas found. But we have found such fields to be worthwhile targets, and there is emerging evidence that the number of such fields is much greater than previously thought. Further, they have contributed to a relatively stable, if lower, finding rate.

A significant complement to intended modest size field exploration is further exploitation of existing, old large fields, a kind of re-exploration. About 320 billion barrels of oil are known in existing reservoirs, but classed as unrecoverable. Since price decontrol, we have been moving about 3 billion barrels per year of this volume to the proven reserve column, a volume along with new field discovery, sufficient to reverse the decade-long decline in U.S. Lower 48 production and reserves.

The number of small and modest fields is huge. In recent years we have been discovering about 1300 oil and gas fields yearly in the U.S. Lower 48, or by my estimate, about 1 percent of the total number yearly. The 3 billion barrels of oil moved to the reserve column yearly from reserve growth in old reservoirs is likewise about 1 percent of the total reserve yearly.

The pursuit of targets in small field exploration and large field exploitation in recent years has stabilized production and reserve levels in the US. Lower 48; the magnitude of these targets is sufficient for continued stability well into the future, if the appropriate incentive exists. Obituaries on U.S. petroleum geology now being written are vastly premature.

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