This paper describes qualitatively the key factors driving deepwater petroleum exploration and development prospectivity worldwide, including but not limited to global petroleum supply and demand fundamentals, availability and accessibility to petroleum resources, technology innovations and infrastructure development, and geopolitics and fiscal arrangements. Quantitative indicators are estimated to analyze these factors with respect to deepwater activity and outcomes in Africa using number of fields discovered, the number of producing and on-stream fields, the estimated average size of discoveries, instantaneous production flow estimates, completion techniques and methods, and capital expenditure compontents and trends. The paper evaluates and compares the attractiveness and prospectivity of the deepwater in Africa using the above empirical indicators by country.

Keywords:
asset and portfolio management, Egypt, isl forecast, Upstream Oil & Gas, discovery, Africa, development effort, Nigeria, reserves replacement, Deepwater Petroleum Exploration
Subjects:
Pipelines, Flowlines and Risers, Offshore Facilities and Subsea Systems, Reserves Evaluation, Environment, Sustainability/Social Responsibility, Asset and Portfolio Management, Strategic Planning and Management, Sustainable development, Reserves replacement, booking and auditing, Exploration and appraisal strategies
Copyright 2009, Society of Petroleum Engineers
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