Shell’s Loss Is Eni’s Gain

Oilprice.com ^ | 02-10-2015 | Oilnorway

[bananaman22]

At the beginning of this week, oil major Shell announced that it will indefinitely postpone (read: completely abandon) its Arctic drilling operations in the Chukchi Sea offshore Alaska. The company stated: "Shell will now cease further exploration activity in offshore Alaska for the foreseeable future. This decision reflects both the Burger J well result, the high costs associated with the project and the challenging and unpredictable federal regulatory environment in offshore Alaska."

This retreat will result in Shell losing its $7 billion investment, a bitter pill to swallow for the oil major.

While Shell and many others have given up on their Arctic ambitions, for the time being at least, Italian oil major Eni is closer to producing Arctic oil and gas than ever before.

[Vigilanteman]

The Sierra Club is currently giddy about Shell’s retreat. I wonder if they REALLY think Italians will do a better job of exploration and drilling than the Dutch.

[SamAdams76]

The Cretaceous is one of the most important stratigraphic intervals for hydrocarbon source rocks. This article summarizes the distribution, formation, and development characteristics of Cretaceous source rocks and associated oil and gas resources in the world and China, aiming at improving the understanding of this hydrocarbon enrichment and at broadening domestic exploration. Outside China, these rocks are generally formed in marine or transgressive environments during both the Upper and Lower Cretaceous. The majority of Cretaceous source rocks are located in the Persian Gulf, Mediterranean, and Gulf Coast of the USA. Kerogen types within these source rocks have distinct spatial distribution characteristics, with high-latitude Boreal Realm, Tethyan Realm and South Gondwana Realm source rocks containing type III, II, II–III kerogens, respectively. Cretaceous source rocks in China can be mainly divided into four zones: Eastern, Central, Northwest, and Qinghai-Tibet Plateau zones. The majority of Chinese source rocks formed in the Early Cretaceous, whereas the most productive source rocks are developed in the Upper Cretaceous, such as those within the Songliao Basin. Most of these basins are formed in lacustrine environments, although some may have been influenced by transgressive events. Cretaceous source rocks are formed in four distinctive ways: 1) during Oceanic Anoxic Events and associated global sea-level rises, 2) in Black Sea-type retention basins, 3) during transgression and 4) during periods of significant terrestrial input. Formation of these source rocks is controlled by four factors: paleoclimate, paleotopography, transgression, and Oceanic Anoxic Events. These four major controlling factors indicate that China’s hydrocarbon exploration within the Cretaceous should focus on two key areas with extremely low exploration levels, the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and the southeastern coast of China.