World Provinces

Figure 1. Cumulative percent of world known petroleum volume by ranked oil and gas provinces.

Figure 2. Cumulative percent of world known petroleum volume by the 100 top-ranked oil and gas provinces.

Figure 3. Histogram showing volumes of known petroleum by the 100 top-ranked oil and gas provinces.

Figure 4. Histogram showing known petroleum volumes of the world by region.

Figure 5. Histogram showing number of priority and boutique provinces to be assessed in each region.APPENDICES

Appendix A. Geologic provinces of the world by region.

Appendix A1. A list of geologic provinces of the world by code number.

Appendix A2. An alphabetical list of geologic provinces of the world.

Appendix B. List of priority and boutique provinces with graphs showing numbers of fields by size class for each priority province of the world, exclusive of the United States.PLATES

World Provinces

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This report presents a division of the world into 937 geologic provincesand identifies those that the United States Geological Survey (USGS) plansto assess for petroleum resources. The selection of geologic provinces tobe assessed was based on a ranking of known petroleum volumes in terms ofbarrels of oil equivalent (BOE). Known petroleum volume is defined as cumulativeproduction plus remaining reserves. For the BOE calculation, 6,000 cubicfeet of gas equals 1 barrel of oil equivalent.

This ranking of the world's petroleum provinces is a product of the WorldEnergy Project of the USGS, which is undertaking an assessment of the undiscoveredoil and gas resources of the world using new assessment methods, new databases,and a total petroleum system approach (Magoon and Dow, 1994). The identificationand ranking of geologic provinces comprise the first of a three step assessmentprocess. The second step involves identifying and mapping total petroleumsystems within each province. The third step is the assessment of the totalpetroleum systems. The second and third steps of the assessment processwill be described in later reports. Four previous world assessments havebeen undertaken by the USGS utilizing a Delphi approach and the resultswere reported by country rather than by geologic province (Masters and others,1984; 1987; 1991; and 1994).

Those provinces that together represent 95% of the world's known petroleumvolume exclusive of the United States (U.S.), are here called priority provinces,and comprise the main group of provinces that will be assessed. Seventy-sixprovinces were defined as priority provinces. In addition, certainother provinces in the world will be assessed for a variety of political,technical, or geographic reasons and are identified as boutique provinces.

In this report, we define regions and geologic provinces, allocate knownpetroleum volume of fields to those provinces, and rank the provinces accordingto the known petroleum volume allocated. We identify priority and boutiqueprovinces for assessment. In addition, we discuss the ranking of provincesand the relation of the ranking to potential reserve growth and undiscoveredresources.

The world's land areas are divided here into eight regions (Plate 1) that approximate those used by the U.S. StateDepartment and the U.S. Department of Energy. Each region has been assigneda coordinator and staff responsible for assessment. The regions are (Plate1): 1, Former Soviet Union; 2, Middle East and North Africa; 3, Asia Pacific;4, Europe; 5, North America; 6, Central and South America; 7, Sub-SaharanAfrica and Antarctica; and 8, South Asia.

We began the assessment by defining geologic provinces of the world (Plate 1, Appendix A2).These encompass all the world's major land areas, and adjoining waters todepths of 2,000 meters. Each geologic province is a spatial entity withcommon geologic attributes. A province may include a single dominant structuralelement such as a basin or a fold belt, or a number of contiguous relatedelements. Province boundaries were drawn as logically as possible alongnatural geologic boundaries although in some places, for example in theopen oceans, they are located arbitrarily.

Provinces were defined by Regional Coordinators and staff from surfaceand subsurface geologic maps. To aid in defining provinces, digital geologicmaps were compiled from the available literature. Provinces of the UnitedStates onshore areas and State waters were established in the 1995-1996U. S. Department of the Interior National Oil and Gas Assessment (Gautierand others, 1995; Minerals Management Service, 1996).

World-wide, 937 geologic provinces (Plate 1, Appendix A) were identified.A four-digit numeric code, in which the first digit represents the region,and a descriptive province name were given to each of the provinces (Appendix A1). Plate 1 shows the province outlines,their assigned numbers, and the regions. Plate 2,in addition to region and province outlines, shows the names and numbersof the priority and boutique provinces as well as the centerpoints of oiland gas fields.

About 32,000 fields contained in three oil and gas production databasespurchased by the USGS were allocated to world regions and then to geologicprovinces. This allocation was based on the location of the field's centerpoint using geographic information systems applications. All subsequentstatistics rely on data contained in these databases. Data for United Statesonshore areas and State waters are from the Significant Oil and Gas Fieldsof the United States database (NRG Associates, Inc.,1995a) and are currentthrough 1992. Data for U.S. Federal offshore areas are from Minerals ManagementService (Lore and others, 1996) and are current through 1994. Canadian dataare from the Significant Oil and Gas Pools of Canada database (NRG Associates,Inc., 1995b) and are current through 1993. All other data are from the PetroleumExploration and Production Database (Petroconsultants, 1996) and are currentthrough the second quarter of 1996. Of the 937 geologic provinces, 406 containsome known petroleum volume. Exclusive of the U. S., 354 provinces containknown petroleum volumes.

The geologic provinces were ranked by total known petroleum volume inmillions of barrels of oil equivalent (MMBOE) within the province. Totalknown petroleum volume is the sum of the volumes of oil, in barrels; naturalgas (combined non-associated gas and associated-dissolved gas), in termsof its energy equivalent in barrels of oil; and natural gas liquids (NGL),in barrels. The ranking, known volumes of commodities, and total known petroleumvolume for each petroleum province are shown in Table1. Figure 1 and Figure 2show percent cumulative known petroleum volume as a function of provincerank for provinces exclusive of the U. S. Figure 3shows the individual volumes of known petroleum in the 100 top-ranked provincesexclusive of the U. S.

Exclusive of the U. S., the 76 largest geologic provinces in terms ofpetroleum volume contain 95% of the worlds total known petroleumvolumes (Table 1). These 76 provinces are the priority provinces that willbe assessed. We have database records for more than 14,000 fields locatedin these priority provinces. In addition to the priority provinces, allboutique provinces will be assessed. Boutique provinces rank below the priorityprovinces (Table 1). Most of the boutique provinces contain some known volumeof petroleum. However, a few currently have no known petroleum volumes documentedin the databases used and are listed last in Table 1.

Known petroleum volumes for eachof the eight regions are shown in Figure 4. Region2, Middle East and North Africa, contains the largest known petroleum volumefollowed by Region 1, Former Soviet Union and by Region 5, North America.The ranking (Table 1) shows that 23 U.S. provinces are among the world'stop 100 provinces, placing the large endowment of oil and gas that the U.S. enjoys in a global perspective. The number of geologic provinces in eachregion that contain known petroleum volumes is also shown in Figure 4. Thenumbers of priority and boutique provinces in each region are shown in Figure 5.

Priority provinces have been selected based on known petroleum volumesreported in the databases listed earlier, and thus are unlikely to changeunless a cutoff other than 95% of the world's total known petroleum volumeis adopted. In contrast, boutique provinces were selected on the basis ofmore subjective factors such as perceived petroleum potential and politicalrelationships. The list of boutique provinces is therefore more subjectto additions and deletions in the future.

Field-size distributions by petroleum type for the 76 priority provincesare shown in Appendix B by province number.These field-size distributions provide information about each province regarding:1) natural endowment of oil and gas volumes; 2) current economic field sizes;3) relative exploration maturity for oil and gas; and 4) potential for undiscoveredresources (missing or under-represented field-size classes).

A majority of the world's known petroleum fields are oil fields. Amongthe priority provinces, the ratio of known oil fields to gas fields is about2:1, which probably does not reflect the natural endowment of gas relativeto oil. In the U.S., where a delivery infrastructure is in place and gasgenerally finds a ready market, the ratio of oil fields to gas fields isapproximately 1:1. In the U.S., the known volume of gas (in BOE) is approximatelyequal to the known volume of oil. Should technology become available tomake gas economically competitive with oil, world gas exploration and developmentcould rapidly become more important.

Figure 1 and Figure 2 demonstratethe uneven distribution among the petroleum provinces of the world's knownpetroleum volumes. Exclusive of the U. S., about 80% of the world's knownpetroleum volume resides in only 7% (24) of the oil and gas provinces; 95%of the world's known petroleum volume resides in 21% (76) of the oil andgas provinces (Table 1). Of the world's almost20,000 oil and gas fields assigned to provinces in our databases, exclusiveof the U. S., 72% (>14,000) reside in the 76 priority provinces. 006ab0faaa