Economic Report 2016 - Oil & Gas UK

Figure 15: Primary Resource Theme of Undeveloped Reserves

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3.5

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2.5

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2

1.5

4

1

Undeveloped Reserves (Billion boe)

0.5

5

0

Conventional Shelf

Deepwater

Heavy Oil

High-Pressure High-Temperature

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Primary Resource Theme

Source: Wood Mackenzie

The Technology Leadership Board (TLB), made up of industry, academia and government agency expertise, is seeking to unlock as much of this potential as possible. The TLB was set up in late 2014 to advance technological development to reduce costs, improve efficiency, and maximise UKCS competitiveness and economic recovery. It now feeds into the industry and OGA’s joint MER UK (Maximising Economic Recovery from the UKCS) Forum and aims to ensure technology development is collaborative, focused on priority areas and suitable for multi-field application. The four key areas identified are well construction, small pools development, asset integrity and decommissioning 17 . The small pools theme, for example, has already made tangible progress by mapping these discoveries. The OGA has identified over 350 unsanctioned discoveries of less than 50 million boe in size, containing total resources of over 3.4 billion boe (technically recoverable). These are currently not pursued by the licence holders. Preliminary economic modelling by the TLB Small Pools work group 18 shows that if development costs could be reduced by 50 per cent, for instance through better engineering concepts, novel technologies, and improved operational and commercial arrangements, this could unlock over 1.5 billion boe of the above resources. Other work targeting reductions in drilling costs and asset integrity will also help these project developments, further increasing the likelihood of these reserves being extracted. The TLB is among the bodies supporting the new Oil and Gas Technology Centre (OGTC), announced earlier this year and underpinned by funding from the UK and Scottish Governments through the Aberdeen City Region Deal. The OGTC’s priority is to establish Solution Centres that bring together knowledge and expertise from across industry and deliver practical solutions.

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17 Find out more about the progress of the MER UK Technology Leadership Board at http://cld.bz/qvj13au/28 18 Participating organisations: Centrica, EnQuest, National Subsea Research Initiative, Oil & Gas UK, OGA.

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