2017 will most likely witness a continuation in the decline of conventional oil discoveries. This year has seen no major onshore discovery, pretty much all significant finds were confined to offshore areas of the Americas, where Mexico’s continental shelf unearthed two highly promising formations, the Ixachi (1.5 BBbl) and Zama (1.4 BBbl), whilst Alaska’s Horseshoe discovery gave rise to hopes that this once-prolific region might be back in the game again. Europe’s headway has been incomparably paler – it seems that the biggest find will be Statoil’s Verbier field which is estimated to contain up to 0.13 BBbl. In stark contrast with the above, China’s CNPC announced last week that its latest discovery, the Mahu field located within the Junggar Basin of Xinjiang province, is estimated to hold between 0.52 and 1.24 billion tons of crude (4-9 BBbl), by far the largest find of recent years – provided that […]