One hundred years of exploration

Discovery trends and creaming curves going back more than 100 years show today’s industry in context. The current exploration world is quite unlike the industry that had existed over most of its long history. Over a single decade, it has become highly-polarised between unconventional plays onshore and deepwater plays offshore. These two hot themes do not loom quite so large when viewed from a century-long perspective. Since 1900, the industry has added around five trillion barrels of oil equivalent resource. Unconventional and deepwater plays together amount to just 10% of these volumes.