Upstream major capital projects: despite the shift to short-cycle, long life assets remain core

Since the downturn, over 100 major capital projects have been approved for development. The corresponding reserves approved is 73 bnboe. Despite the shift to flexible short-cycle investments, long lived projects still feature very prominently. On average the project lifetime is 24 years. Overall, the industry trend is for a portfolio of projects that provide both investment flexibility and long life. In this Insight, we analyse the production lifetime for approved and pre-FID major capital projects. We analyse the main resource themes, the main operators and the main regions, drilling down to the project lifetime, lead time from FID to start-up and reserves approved.