The world's energy companies are seeking out new prospects for oil and gas as the war in the Middle East continues, expanding their footprint to faraway places such as Venezuela and Nigeria.
"Sustained high oil prices are the best friend of exploration," Schreiner Parker, an analyst at the research and consulting firm Rystad Energy, told The Wall Street Journal.
"In the medium to longer term, there will be a risk premium attached to every barrel coming out of the Persian Gulf that will push people into frontier exploration," Parker added.
Already, ExxonMobil has plans to spend up to $24 billion in the deep-water oil fields of Nigeria, and Chevron is expanding in Venezuela.
BP is also looking at Africa, where it has bought stakes in oil blocks off the Namibian coast, and TotalEnergies has signed off on an exploration deal in Turkey.
According to Wood Mackenzie, an energy research and consulting firm, major oil companies could create $120 billion through exploration ventures in the upcoming years.
The world's oil producers need to find resources that will let them add 300 billion barrels to their reserves so demand can be met through 2050, the firm added.
Last week, ExxonMobil took steps toward drilling off the coast of Greece, and in recent months it signed preliminary exploration agreements with Turkey, Iraq, and Gabon, a central African nation.
The company is also conducting seismic work to seek oil and gas in the deep waters near Trinidad and Tobago.
International spending for the company came in at about $9 billion last year.
Meanwhile, Chevron is the largest foreign investor in Venezuela. Last week, the company agreed to a deal boosting its position in areas that have the viscous heavy oil favored by U.S. refineries.
State-run Petroleos de Venezuela has sold Chevron an additional 13% working interest in one of its joint ventures, and the company has a 30% stake in a neighboring project.
As a result of Iranian attacks on energy infrastructure, there is an increasing search for oil supplies and a global surge in energy prices.
The surge has given the oil industry a cash windfall that is expected to help it reach into nations that had been before out of reach and comes after many drillers cut exploration spending to return cash to shareholders.
Last week, Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, during a call with oil company executives, urged them to keep pushing to bolster oil production in hopes of pushing back against surging prices before there is a supply shortfall.
With oil futures trading at almost $88 a barrel, oil companies are seeking to maximize production while prices are high, but they want to remain within their current budgets while not taking on added costs of major investments, sources told the Journal.
Wood Mackenzie reports that major oil companies have spent an average of $19 billion a year on global exploration each year from 2021 to 2025.
Sources also said that energy executives want to find enough oil and gas to remain profitable into the 2030s.
The Strait of Hormuz closure has trapped 20% of the world's supply of oil and liquefied natural gas, and Western oil companies operating in the Middle East have been hit hard.
ExxonMobil says the war has cut its global oil and gas production by 6%. The company is expected to lose about $5 billion in revenue, a year after it suffered damage at its Qatar natural gas facilities.
Its partner, QatarEnergy, estimates that repairs to the operations could take up to five years.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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