Forty-three licensing rounds have been concluded so far in 2020, the fewest of any year to date this century, according to Rystad Energy.
Total awarded acreage is also on track to be the lowest since 2002 at just over 324,000 sq km (125,097 sq mi).
For 2021, the analyst forecasts only a small improvement, with total awarded acreage likely to remain below 500,000 sq km (193,051 sq mi).
This year Australia headed the lease round count, concluding seven rounds over various offshore and onshore regions.
Next was the US with four lease rounds, two in the Gulf of Mexico, one in Alaska and one in the Beaufort Sea.
“Even though many regulatory authorities are now conducting licensing virtually, most licensing activity still involves technical data review,” said Aatisha Mahajan, senior upstream analyst at Rystad.
“This has been impacted this year by travel restrictions for personnel, and also by a lack of sufficient funds from exploration companies.”
Asia experienced the biggest drop in acreage awards this year, to less than one-quarter of the 2019 level.
In the Middle East, shelved exploration plans led new acreage awards to fall to 20,000 sq km (7,722 sq mi), compared with 100,000 sq km (38,610 sq mi) in 2019, while South American licensed acreage fell to 12,000 sq km (4,633 sq mi) from 180,000 sq km (69,498 sq mi): this was mainly due to all licensing rounds in Brazil being delayed.
Africa, initially predicted to be this year’s exploration licensing hotspot, ended up with 64% less acreage being licensed than in 2019.
Globally, the largest total area awarded this year was in Norway’s APA round, followed by India’s two concluded OALP rounds, Angola, Australia, and the UK. All the awarded acreage is in more mature basins.
But some frontier basins attracted interest, notably Egypt’s Herodotus basin and Sierra Leone in northwest Africa.
ONGC was the company amassing the most acreage via awards in India’s OALP rounds, followed by London-based Deltic Energy, a successful bidder in Sierra Leone.
Others in the top 10 included ExxonMobil, Total, Chevron and Shell, each averaging 15,000 sq km (5,791 sq mi) of new acreage.
Rystad expects 2021 licensing activity to be dominated by Suriname, Guyana, the US, Norway, Israel, India, China, Malaysia, Egypt, and the UAE.
Other countries may push back licensing schedules to the second half of the year, i.e. Indonesia, Myanmar, Thailand, Algeria, Tanzania, Equatorial Guinea, Ecuador, and Barbados.
Source: Offshore
