Activity from upstream operators is starting to pick up from the post-2014 oil slump. However, global discovered oil and gas volumes still lag far behind where they stood before the oil price drop.

Two discoveries in Guyana were announced on 16 September 2019, further progressing the exciting story of oil in South America.

Although the quantities discovered are relatively small, with estimates of between 20-60 MMbo recoverable, the well proves the presence of oil in the blocks north of the Wisting field, Barents Sea.

Cooper Energy have made a gas discovery in the large Late Jurassic–Cenozoic Otway Basin, Australia.

Although underexplored, two oil-bearing provinces have been identified in Cuba and there is plenty of open acreage available in the ongoing oil and gas licensing round.

This black shale has been known and exploited as a source rock for over 100 years, but in a potentially game-changing event, the first exports from the Vaca Muerta itself were delivered in June 2019.

The Faroe Islands are inviting oil companies to explore for hydrocarbons on the Faroese Continental Shelf.

TGS and PGS recently announced a joint multi-client High Density 3D project in the Jeanne d’Arc Basin offshore Newfoundland, East Canada.

The Caribbean currently offers an unprecedented number of hydrocarbon exploration opportunities, with promising potential in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Honduras, Nicaragua and The Bahamas.

There are wide lessons to be learned from the controversy over the origins of the enigmatic Cretaceous lacustrine carbonate reservoirs of offshore Brazil.

The Dominican Republic has just announced its first licensing round, which concludes in December 2019, offering plenty of potential in fourteen blocks.

The timing of continental extension relative to salt deposition and the impact of pre-salt faulting is critical to reservoir formation and exploration success in the South Atlantic. Major advances in broadband seismic data processing offer clearer imaging, allowing a closer look at the elements of the prolific plays and their tectono-stratigraphic boundary conditions.

Over the next few years the exploration drive in the pre-salt hydrocarbon plays of Brazil is going to shift away from national oil company Petrobras towards the global oil majors.

The use of innovative technologies opens up huge volumes of remote oil and gas resources in the Yamal Peninsula in Russia.

A proposed new tectonic model for the northern Algerian Alpine Region based on studies of the Internal Zone rejects the previous model and suggests ideas for new hydrocarbon traps and prospects.