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Posts Tagged ‘Gulf of America’

World Bank flaring data for offshore producers

Posted in Offshore Energy - General, Norway, Regulation, flaring and venting, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on July 16, 2026| Leave a Comment »

World Bank global flaring estimates are now derived from 3 satellites carrying NOAA VIIRS detectors. The increased number of observations improves the precision and accuracy of the flare locations and volume estimates.

The World Bank (WB) Global Gas Flaring Tracker is the only worldwide flaring data source. Offshore and onshore data are segmented, so offshore flaring can be considered separately for each country.

The WB estimates that 21600.03 million cu m (762.5 bcf) of gas were flared at offshore locations worldwide in 2025. This is an increase from 2024 when the total offshore flaring volume was 21159.91 million cu m.

The flaring totals for prominent offshore producers are entered in the table below. Also included are the largest offshore flares for each country.

Unsurprisingly, Norway led the pack in minimizing offshore flaring. Their total of 36.11 million cu m (1.3 bcf) is very impressive for such a large producer. The US offshore total of 160.95 cu m (5.7 bcf) is also quite respectable relative to production.

At the other end of the scale are Iran – 3329 million cu m (118 bcf), Nigeria – 2566 (91 bcf), Angola – 2300 (81 bcf), and Mexico 2068 (73 bcf). These 4 countries accounted for nearly half of all 2025 offshore flaring. They were also massive offshore flarers in 2024: Iran – 3753 million cu m, Nigeria – 2867, Angola – 2040, and Mexico – 2223.

If both onshore and offshore flaring are considered, Iran flared 29931 million cu m in 2025. That equates to 1.057 trillion cu ft!

2025 WB flaring total
million cu meters		largest flarelargest flare volume
Angola2300.26Lombo East862.02
Australia268.36Santos61.89
Brazil969.16Albacora Leste118.93
Canada145.12Terra Nova95.83
China535.56Weizhou 12-168.26
Congo, Rep.788.98Kitina384.12
Gabon368.91Tchatamba Marin37.46
Ghana351.81Sankofa East184.97
Guyana227.38Yellowtail164.06
Indonesia292.16Belida30.84
Iran3329.19Foroozan1360.09
Libya313.78Bouri74.07
Malaysia1459.32Kasawari205.8
Mexico2067.62Akal386.44
Nigeria2565.88Oso308.37
Norway36.11Balder6.38
Qatar688.19Ras Laffan LNG54.65
Russia227.27Yuri Korchagin82.07
Trinidad87.66Atlantic LNG53.23
UK234.08Penguins22.94
US160.95NA*22.77
*The WB lists the field name for the largest US flare as NA. The lat/long for the Whale deepwater platform in the Western Gulf matches the identified flare location (26.22 lat., -94.67 long.)

The WB tracker identifies the Gulf of America facilities with the highest flaring volumes. The 2025 list is pasted below. Repeat top ten Gulf flarers from 2024 were Vito (14.55 million cu m in 2024), Pompano (11.68), and Lucius (5.72).

The WB lists the field name for the largest US flare as NA. The lat/long for the Whale deepwater platform in the Western Gulf matches the identified flare location (26.22 lat., -94.67 long.)

Per the WB tracker, the Terra Nova FPSO, offshore Newfoundland, was the top North American offshore flarer by a considerable margin (data for Canada below). Terra Nova was also the top flarer in 2024 (95.56 million cu m).

The location of the only flare identified offshore California corresponds with that of the Dos Cuadras field in the Santa Barbara Channel. The estimated 2025 flaring volume was 0.10 million cu m.

The WB flaring tracker is an excellent data source, but doesn’t capture vented gas and likely understates the total volume flared. The WB estimated that 160.95 million cu m (5.68 bcf) were flared at US offshore facilities in 2025. This compares with the 9.7 bcf (flaring and venting) and 8.0 bcf (flaring only) totals derived from ONRR data (chart below). The flaring difference is not surprising given that the WB numbers are dependent on satellite imagery and the ONRR data are from mandated/audited production reports. A previous comparison also showed that the WB flaring estimates are significantly lower than the ONRR numbers. From a regulatory oversight perspective, this is rather reassuring given that the reverse (WB>ONRR) would imply serious reporting issues.

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As Lease Sale BBG3 approaches (Aug. 12, 2026), Gulf production is high, drilling is low

Posted in drilling, energy policy, Gulf of Mexico, Offshore Energy - General, tagged , , , , , , , , , on July 9, 2026| 2 Comments »

Lease sale Big Beautiful Gulf 3 (BBG3) will be held on 8/12/2026. The Final Notice of Sale is attached.

Given the rather tepid BBG1 and BBG2 results and the high sale frequency, robust bidding is not expected. Nonetheless, the BBG bidding patterns and tract evaluations have been interesting, most notably BOEM’s rejection of LLOG’s bid for Keathley Canyon 828, an expired lease block in the their Buckskin field.

Keathley Canyon 828 is not among the blocks listed for sale at BBG3. Per the Notice of Sale (p. 4), “any lease blocks whose high bids were rejected and not appealed in the immediately preceding Big Beautiful Gulf lease sale, are expected to be included as eligible for lease.” Can we therefore assume that either the KC 828 bid rejection or the prior lease expiration is being appealed?

The legislatively mandated BBG lease terms are attractive – 10 years and 12.5% royalty for deepwater blocks. A more recent legislative directive requires (wrongly in my opinion) the approval of downhole commingling requests. This accelerates the return on investments in deepwater, high pressure reservoirs. Such commingling has presumably contributed to record Gulf oil production in 2025. The longer term concern is the impact on ultimate oil and gas recovery.

Meanwhile, the Gulf rig count and well start numbers continue to disappoint. Baker Hughes (7/2/2026) lists only 4 active rigs in the deepwater Gulf – one each in the Alaminos and Mississippi Canyon areas and two in the Green Canyon Area. BSEE’s borehole file lists only 15 new deepwater exploratory well starts YTD.

GOA Lease Sale BBG3 FNOS – Final Notice of SaleDownload

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ONRR sets the record straight – 2025 was in fact a record OCS production year. Large discrepancy between ONRR and EIA.

Posted in Gulf of Mexico, Offshore Energy - General, tagged , , , , , on July 7, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Six months after the year ended, the Office of Natural Resources Revenue (ONRR) has completed their precise, to the barrel, production accounting. BOEM was correct – 2025 was a record OCS oil production year by a considerable amount. Total OCS production, nearly 714 million bbls, exceeded the 2019 record by 14 million bbls. EIA data still favor 2019 by a slight margin.

The 16+ million barrel difference between the 2025 ONRR and EIA OCS production totals is much larger than any such differential in recent years and warrants an explanation. Below are the 2025 OCS totals (first table) and the 2019 to 2025 Gulf totals (2nd table). As indicated in the second table, all other differentials between ONRR and EIA were <2 million bbls, and only the 2024 differential was >1 million bbls.

2025 OCS total – ONRR2025 OCS total – EIA2025 Gulf only – ONRR2025 Gulf only – EIA
713,673,419697,020,000708,803,859692,634,000
Table 1

Gulf oil production (bbls)ONRREIA
2019692,681,301692,831,000
2020609,704,101610,064,000
2021623,586,734623,167,000
2022632,639,739631,900,000
2023680,868,936680,400,000
2024656,217,605654,223,000
2025708,803,859692,634,000
Table 2

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Exxon to relinquish carbon disposal leases! Repsol should do the same!

Posted in Regulation, Gulf of Mexico, energy policy, CCS, tagged , , , , , on July 2, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Gulf of America lease map: 199 oil and gas leases were wrongfully acquired for carbon disposal purposes. At Sale 261, Repsol acquired 36 nearshore Texas tracts in the Mustang Island and Matagorda Island areas (red blocks at the western end of the map above). Exxon had acquired 163 nearshore Texas tracts (blue in map above) at Sales 257 (94) and 259 (69).

As expected, the carbon disposal era in Federal offshore waters is ending before it began, and rightfully so.

Energy Intelligence is reporting that Exxon is relinquishing “more than 160 leases” in nearshore Federal waters off Texas. The actual number of oil and gas leases that the company improperly acquired for carbon disposal purposes is 163 (map above).

The reason being cited for the lease relinquishments is that the Dept. of the Interior has shelved regulations for carbon disposal on the OCS. Kudos to the DOI officials responsible for that decision. Carbon disposal has the support of no one except the companies that hope to profit from it. Further, there is no scenario under which Interior could have allowed these wrongfully acquired oil and gas leases to be converted to carbon disposal leases.

Now that these carbon disposal leases are being relinquished, it would be nice to see Exxon start acquiring OCS oil and gas leases for their intended purposes. Exxon and Mobil are historic Gulf operators who were once important contributors to the success of the OCS program.

History of the Exxon and Repsol CCS lease acquisitions.

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New Gulf oil production record set in April; Sable boosts Pacific production

Posted in California, Gulf of Mexico, Offshore Energy - General, tagged , , , , , , on June 30, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Per the preliminary EIA data for April, Gulf of America OCS facilities produced an average of 2.107 million bopd in April. This surpasses the previous record of 2.060 million bopd set in January.

Meanwhile, the Sable bump is now evident in the EIA’s Pacific OCS production data with a ~50% March-April increase from January-February. A bigger increase should be apparent when the May numbers are posted. How will Sable fare in the upcoming court battles?

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Part 2: Gulf of America flaring and venting (2019-2025) – charts and summary table

Posted in climate, flaring and venting, Gulf of Mexico, natural gas, Offshore Energy - General, tagged , , , , , , on June 29, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Part 1

Gulf of America flaring and venting data for 2019-2025 are summarized in the attached table. The preferred performance indicators are the percentages of produced gas that are flared and vented both for oil-well gas (OWG, also known as associated or casinghead gas) and gas-well gas (GWG or non-associated gas).

The flaring and venting table was compiled using monthly data submitted to the Office of Natural Resources Revenue (ONRR). This is the best data source because reporting is mandatory and strictly enforced, and flaring and venting are accounted for separately. All volumes are in millions of cubic feet (MMCF).

The venting and flaring volumes are segmented for both OWG and GWG production. Venting produced gas (mostly methane) is a more significant environmental concern from both air quality and greenhouse gas (GHG) perspectives.

Observations and Comments:

  • The total volume of gas flared and vented in 2025 was 9.7 bcf (chart 1). 80% of that volume was flared, leaving 20% vented. OWG flaring (chart 5) reached a new high of 7.785 bcf in 2025, a near record oil production year for the Gulf.
  • Total venting and flaring in 2025 increased by 819 million cubic feet vs. 2024. However, the 7-year trend line remains favorable (chart 1).
  • Thinking that 2019, a record year for total flaring and venting, may have biased the trend line, I extended the chart back to 2015, the first year for which I have ONRR data. As you can see in chart 2, the overall trend is still favorable.
  • The % of produced gas that was flared or vented remains persistently above the historical 1.0% target (chart 3). Flared/vented volumes were below 1% of production prior to 2018.
  • The higher flaring/venting % may be because most gas production is now from oil wells, which typically have higher flaring rates associated with processing upsets.
  • The flaring and venting gap between GWG and OWG has narrowed, largely because of an increase in GWG flaring/venting. The combined rate for GWG more than doubled over the 7 year period, rising to 0.81% vs. 1.34% for OWG. (chart 3)
  • Total venting rose to 1.7 bcf in 2025, the highest venting volume in 3 years.
  • The % of GWG being vented doubled over the past 5 years to over 0.50% (chart 4). The growth in venting warrants further investigation.
  • The % of OWG vented increased slightly to 0.20%. Further reduction in OWG venting had been expected given that OWG production is increasingly from deepwater facilities with modern flaring systems.
  • A 2020 Univ. of Michigan study found “Large, older facilities situated in shallow waters tended to produce episodic, disproportionally high spikes of methane emissions. These facilities, which have more than seven platforms apiece, contribute to nearly 40% of emissions, yet consist of less than 1% of total platforms.” 
  • Platform specific data would be helpful in further assessing flaring/venting sources and trends.
chart 1
chart 2
chart 3
chart 4
chart 5

2025 flaring_venting – Sheet3Download

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Grateful for the Miocene!

Posted in Gulf of Mexico, Offshore Energy - General, tagged , , , , , , , on June 23, 2026| Leave a Comment »

My colleague Keith Meekins shared an informative AAPG article about the importance of Miocene reservoirs in offshore oil and gas production worldwide.

“The Miocene delivered a significant amount of sand with excellent reservoir characteristics around the world,” noted Erik Scott, exploration geologist and consulting geologist/sedimentologist.

“Generally, hydrocarbons are coming from deeper, older rock – the Cretaceous, the Jurassic. By the time these source rocks get to the (hydrocarbon) generation window, the Miocene reservoirs are in place,” Scott said.

“Generally, the Miocene deposits are surrounded by fine-grained muds that produced sealing potential,” he noted.

More:

  • Miocene reservoirs account for more than 40 percent of established hydrocarbon reserves in the deepwater Gulf. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management identifies more than 9 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable Miocene resources.
  • Recently, Eni found a giant Miocene natural gas accumulation in the Kutei Basin offshore Indonesia with an estimated 5 trillion cubic feet of gas and 300 million barrels of condensate in place.
  • Azule Energy, equally owned by Eni and BP, made a recent Miocene oil discovery with an estimated 500 million barrels of crude offshore Angola.

Keith points to RTM (reverse-time migration) as an important factor in helping to unlock Miocene resources. RTM produces dramatically improved images below salt bodies and in areas of complex overburden. Per AAPG, Talos Energy used reprocessed RTM seismic to identify a bypassed Miocene fault-block closure in the Green Canyon Area of the Gulf. This structure had previously been invisible.

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Gulf of America flaring and venting, 2019-2025 (Part 1)

Posted in energy policy, flaring and venting, Gulf of Mexico, tagged , , , , on June 17, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Minimizing flaring and venting is important from both environmental and resource conservation standpoints. Flaring and venting volumes are also good indicators of how well production systems are designed, managed, and maintained.

Updated flaring and venting volumes for the Gulf of America have been compiled using monthly data submitted to the Office of Natural Resources Revenue (ONRR). This is the best data source because reporting is mandatory and strictly enforced, and flaring and venting are accounted for separately.

Below are a few summary charts. Completed tables, similar to those posted for 2024, will be attached for sharing at a later date.

Total venting and flaring (fig. 1) in 2025 increased by 819 million cubic feet (mmcf) vs. 2024. However, the 7-year trend line is still favorable. Thinking that 2019, a record flaring year, may have biased the trend line, I extended the chart back to 2015, the first year for which I have ONRR data. As you can see in the second chart, the trend is still favorable.

80% (7785 mmcf) of the total gas flared and vented in 2025 (9741 mmcf) was flared from oil wells (chart below). That’s unsurprising given that most of the Gulf’s gas production is from deepwater oil wells, and flaring rates are higher for oil wells than for gas wells.

The best performance indicators are the normalized data (i.e. percentages of produced gas that are flared and vented both for oil wells and gas wells). Overall (chart below), flaring and venting volumes remain stubbornly above 1.0% of total gas production, the historical target last achieved in 2015. I’ll separate venting and flaring for both oil and gas wells in a future post.

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The events that led to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve also drove the rapid expansion of the offshore program

Posted in Alaska, California, energy policy, Georges Bank, Gulf of Mexico, Offshore Energy - General, tagged , , , , , , , , , on June 5, 2026| 2 Comments »

Nothing tilts public opinion more than high gasoline prices, or worse yet shortages! Hence the 1975 legislation establishing the SPR, the massive SPR drawdown in 2022, and this year’s withdrawals.

Looking back to the halcyon days of the US offshore program, it was the gas lines in the 1970s that drove the remarkable and rather unlikely growth in the program during the Carter Administration (1977-1981). A few highlights from those four years:

  • 15 lease sales including 3 offshore Alaska, 3 in the Atlantic, and 1 offshore California
  • Drilling activity in all 4 regions: GoM, Pacific, Alaska, and Atlantic
  • Natural gas discovery in the Mid Atlantic (Hudson Canyon Unit)
  • North, Mid, and South Atlantic District offices for permitting and inspections
  • 5300 well starts including 97 in water depths > 1000′
  • 314 new platforms including Cognac, the world’s first platform in > 1000′ of water

Perhaps unthinkable today, the Governor of Massachusetts from 1979-1983, Ed King, was a strong supporter of offshore drilling. Absent that support, the exploratory drilling on Georges Bank would probably have never occurred. /s/ Nostalgic Old Man 😉

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Federal oil and gas leasing: onshore program surges to the forefront

Posted in energy policy, Gulf of Mexico, tagged , , , , , , on May 26, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Delaware Basin sale parcels mostly in NM
Lea and Eddy counties, NM

The Federal onshore oil and gas program was always secondary to the offshore program, at least in the opinion of those of us who worked in the offshore program 😉. That was before the shale era revolutionized US energy production.

The onshore program is now free to flex 💪 following recent sale results, most notably last week’s impressive BLM New Mexico sale that featured the Delaware Basin. See the attachment for details.

The table below compares the last two Big Beautiful Gulf sales and the record 2008 Gulf of Mexico sale with the BLM NM sale. Most astonishing is the record $357,129 per acre bid for a single NM tract. Devon Energy, which exited the Gulf in 2010, was the mega-bidder acquiring 24 tracts for $2.6 billion! (Devon is still bogged down in the Hogan/Houchin decommissioning dispute in the Pacific, a case which should temper enthusiasm for relaxed lease assignment and financial assurance policies.)

The attractiveness of the Permian, Delaware, and similar onshore basins has been greatly enhanced by vastly improved drilling and well completion technology. The short lead times to first production are a big advantage relative to offshore development.

The total high bids for Gulf Sale 206, which dwarfed the BBG1 and 2 sales, are still a Federal oil and gas leasing record when converted to 2026 dollars, but the sale area was much larger than for the NM sale.

Saledatetracts bid onacres bid ontotal high bidshighest bid/acre
BLM NM5/20/20267433,529$4,007,609,288$357,129
BBG2 3/11/202625140,753$46,976,423$3,647.57
BBG1 12/10/20251811,023,526$300,425,222$3,227.79
2067/21/20086153,323,047$3,677,688,245
($5.7 million in
2026 dollars)		$18,333.47
($28,300 in 2026 dollars)
The royalty rate on Sale 206 leases is 18.75%, versus 12.5% for the other 3 sales.
Efficient Markets Spring 2026 BLM Lease Sale MaterialsDownload

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