Crude oil reserves in the U.S. were 20.7 billion barrels at the end of 2009, compared to 19.1 billion barrels at the end of 2008, according to a report by the U.S. Department of Energy. The 8.2% overall increase resulted from a number of positive and negative changes to reserves:
- A net increase of 1.9 billion barrels from adjustments and revisions
- A net increase of 950 million barrels from sales and acquisitions
- An increase of 122 million barrels from new field discoveries
- An increase of 1.2 billion barrels from extensions and new reservoir discoveries in existing fields
- A decrease of 1.7 billion barrels of production during the year
Alaska's reserves increased by 59 million barrels, to 3.57 billion barrels, from the end of 2008 to the end of 2009, primarily on revisions. There were just 9 million barrels of new field discoveries and 25 million barrels of extensions - reserve additions resulting from additional drilling and exploration in previously discovered reservoirs. Other changes included:
- A net increase of 242 million barrels in revisions
- A decrease of 7 million barrels in sales
- A decrease of 210 million barrels of production during the year
The net revisions were primarily related to higher oil prices, as operators consider more of the resource base to be economically producible. Prices for West Texas Intermediate crude were 39% higher at the end of 2009 than prices at the end of 2008. When oil prices dropped in 2008 operators made "near-record" negative revisions to reserves.
The 34 million barrels of new reserves added in 2009 in Alaska was just 16% of the 210 million barrels produced.
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Posted by: Caelyn | Thursday, January 26, 2012 at 11:29 PM