The latest oil discoveries from around the world

How much oil there is left in the world is hard to measure exactly, but BP's 2010 Statistical Review of World Energy revealed that there is enough for approximately 40 years at current usage (many believe this figure is in fact rather optimistic). So with this rather scary figure in mind, it's not surprising that oil companies and world citizens alike get enthusiastic about the discovery of new oil fields. So what are some recent oil discoveries?

Unsurprisingly, we start our search in the Americas. Canada and North America have been extracting oil for centuries, but more recently Canada have increased the production of oil in their oil sands, and North America have made new discoveries in oil fields such as the Bakken field (North Dakota), Eagle Ford field (Texas) and Tuscaloosa Marine Shale field (Louisiana/Mississippi).

But more recent oil discoveries are those found in South America. Most recently, Brazil 'struck oil' just off the coast in the Campos Basin. The size of the find, which was revealed in only February 2012, is yet to be announced, although analysts believe it could be an 'elephant' compared to other nearby discoveries. Columbia, Venezuela and Mexico, too, have reported recent oil discoveries, with Reuters going so far as to say that Venezuela alone could have larger oil reserves than Saudi Arabia.

There have also been many recent discoveries in the Arctic regions of Europe and Asia. These include the 2010 discovery of East Siberian oil fields by the Russians in the Urkutsk Region, and Norway's more recent 2012 discovery in the Havis prospect in the Barents Sea.

And finally, we will finish, perhaps surprisingly, in Ireland. In 2007, they discovered that there could be potentially trillions of Euros worth of oil and gas off their coast. And as recently as earlier this year, they started industrial production at the Barryroe field which lies just 50km off the coast of County Cork in Celtic Sea. With so many new discoveries, who knows exactly how long our oil reserves really will last.


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