Will shale gas be a game changer for Brazil?

A long established petroleum country moves back into the limelight.

Recently announced deepwater, sub-salt discoveries in the Sergipe-Alagoas Basin extend that trend into Brazil’s north-eastern continental margin, over 2,000 km north of the Santos Basin discoveries.

Is an Australian unconventional gas boom on the cards?

Cairn Lanka, a subsidiary of Cairn India, has struck gas in the offshore Gulf of Mannar Basin between Sri Lanka and the southern tip of peninsular India.

Horizontal drilling and multi-stage fracturing technologies that have enabled companies to unlock large amounts of gas from shaley source rocks are now targeting similar rocks for oil and gas liquids.

Colombia’s regulatory reforms are paying dividends, with dozens of new oil and gas discoveries over the past two years – yet ‘rediscovered’ older fields are carrying the country to new production records.

The East African Rift System is now one of the world’s ‘exploration hotspots’, potentially just as significant for landlocked Africa and its underexplored rift systems as the Barnett Shale in Texas was to the birth of unconventional shale gas in North America.

The continued application of new technologies is opening up a new exploration frontier in the deepwater Kwanza Basin.

A recent well drilled by the Scottish company Cairn Energy has, for the first time, proven oil offshore West Greenland.

What started as a major shale gas play, the Eagle Ford Shale could be the sixth largest U.S. oilfield ever discovered and the largest in forty years.

Miocene deep water sands were the target for the Macondo well in Mississippi Canyon Block 252, and it is probably from one of these sands that the blowout originates.

Last year, the Keathley Canyon area yielded three of the world’s top oil finds, bringing in high leasing bids and continued drilling activity.

Compared to the other Middle Eastern countries, Jordan does not have a significant position in terms of conventional oil and gas resources. According toOil & Gas Journal (21 December 2009), the kingdom’s known oil reserves are only one million barrels and that of natural gas is 213 billion cubic feet.

Discovered in 2000 at the Elm Coulee Field in Montana, Williston Basin’s Bakken Formation is currently the hottest onshore oil play in the U. S. and Canada.