What is the new landscape for global oil and gas exploration and development in the future?

Since the discovery of the Zohr gas field in the Eastern Mediterranean in 2015, no major new discoveries have been made in Egypt and Cyprus through exploratory wells. To accelerate commercialization, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Shell will deploy new exploration wells in frontier areas of the Herodotus Basin, while Eni and BP will drill along the eastern and western margins of the Nile Delta. Additionally, new exploration wells will be drilled following recent oil discoveries in Guyana and Suriname, and gas discoveries in Indonesia. Through direct negotiations, joint study agreements, and conventional tendering processes, international oil companies (IOCs) are expected to acquire more exploration acreage—particularly along Africa’s Atlantic coast (e.g., Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Angola, and Liberia), in nearshore Middle Eastern basins, and in underexplored eastern basins of Indonesia. Meanwhile, resource-rich governments eager for oil and gas investment will pursue exploration funding via multiple avenues—including enhanced incentives or reduced tax rates, and more attractive fiscal terms. Governments in Indonesia, Malaysia, Nigeria, Angola, and Argentina are streamlining regulatory procedures to expedite seismic survey and drilling permits, facilitating rapid exploration by oil companies. Namibia and Equatorial Guinea have even directly invited exploration companies, offering additional exploration blocks. International upstream operators continue optimizing development efficiency, seeking resource access—including unconventional resources—to achieve sustainable development. Focusing on efficiency is not new, but novel tools—such as artificial intelligence (AI)—are emerging to optimize costs. For instance, ExxonMobil applied data science and AI in the Permian Basin, executing plans faster than anticipated and lowering the shale oil breakeven point by 20%. Unconventional well costs in the U.S. will continue declining, resetting industry-wide efficiency expectations. Beyond conventional oil and gas exploration, companies will pursue unconventional resources to ensure sustainability. Breakthroughs in unconventional oil and gas development outside the U.S. are imminent: Saudi Arabia’s Jafurah Field and Argentina’s Vaca Muerta shale play are accelerating development; Algeria represents another promising shale gas opportunity, attracting strong investment interest from Chevron and ExxonMobil. Although current unconventional investments remain concentrated in the U.S., countries including Canada, Algeria, Argentina, China, and Saudi Arabia are expected to drive rapid growth in unconventional production before 2030. Natural gas remains the dominant focus, with “energy super-basins”—regions possessing vast resource potential—becoming key exploration targets. In 2025, over half of all appraisal wells drilled will target natural gas discoveries for reserve evaluation. “Energy super-basins”—traditional hydrocarbon super-basins combined with abundant renewable energy resources and carbon capture and storage (CCS) infrastructure—will serve as hubs for low-carbon, sustainable development. Appraisal exploration in these “energy super-basins” focuses predominantly on low-carbon natural gas, such as the Rovuma Basin in Mozambique (East Africa), the Pre-Caspian Basin in Kazakhstan (Central Asia), and the Sarawak Basin in Malaysia. Operators will refine resource potential estimates and assess integration potential between fields and CCS infrastructure to enhance economic viability and meet long-term emissions reduction goals.

What hard-core breakthroughs have occurred in marine exploration?

Equipment and Technology Name: Ocean-Bottom Node (OBN) Seismic Exploration System R&D Entity: BGP Inc. At 23:05 on November 1, encouraging news emerged from the ADNOC Transition Zone Project site in the Arabian Gulf, Middle East: the final shot was successfully fired, marking the successful completion of acquisition operations undertaken by BGP’s Marine Geophysical Prospecting Branch Team 8652. This milestone OBN project signifies that the team has completed all acquisition tasks safely, to high quality, and with exceptional efficiency after 1,584 consecutive days of work—and delivered outstanding results, once again earning acclaim in the international high-end geophysical services market. In this project, the independently developed OBN seismic exploration technology by BGP played a pivotal role, enabling early project completion and achieving dual breakthroughs in both acquisition efficiency and data accuracy. Technical Breakthroughs Solving Industry-Wide Challenges Strengthening Independent Innovation Foundations The R&D and application of OBN technology exemplify BGP’s success in expanding its marine business through technological advancement. As marine oil and gas exploration enters a new era demanding higher precision and efficiency, a transformative technology—the Ocean-Bottom Node (OBN) seismic exploration system—has emerged as a core driver for overcoming industry bottlenecks and elevating exploration capabilities. As a world-leading integrated geophysical service provider, BGP has continuously innovated in marine operations, breaking technical barriers and filling critical industry gaps with cutting-edge equipment—enabling CNPC to maintain the world’s largest overall OBN market share for six consecutive years, and propelling Chinese marine seismic exploration technology to the global forefront, delivering a “Chinese solution” for marine seismic exploration and development. Compared with traditional towed-streamer and ocean-bottom cable (OBC) acquisition methods, OBN offers advantages in offshore operations—including improved safety, superior data quality, and higher operational efficiency. Technologically, it effectively resolves three major challenges: node rotation, timing synchronization, and power supply. Leveraging advantages such as high spatial density, full-azimuth coverage, large offsets, and multi-component recording, OBN provides a critical solution for enhancing imaging accuracy of marine hydrocarbon reservoirs. In 2015, BGP keenly identified global trends in marine geophysical services and seized the early opportunity to transition toward OBN technology—thereby establishing itself as a leading, highly competitive OBN technology service provider globally. In 2017, BGP won BP’s Tangguh 3D OBN project in Indonesia—the highest-value single marine seismic survey contract worldwide that year. This win catalyzed the development of an OBN mechanized deployment/retrieval system, OBN QC software, and the Dolphin integrated navigation system—opening the door to the global IOC high-end OBN market and heralding the dawn of the OBN era in marine geophysical exploration. In the domains of data quality control (QC) and navigation positioning, BGP innovatively developed China’s first OBN seismic data QC system and independently created industry-leading OBN QC software. These innovations solved core technical challenges in OBN QC—including data segmentation, clock drift correction, three-component rotation, angular compensation, and node positioning—enabling on-site QC of massive daily OBN datasets exceeding 10 TB. In both functionality and performance, this system surpasses comparable foreign products.

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Chevron will begin seismic research in Greek offshore blocks by year-end after securing stakes and leases, serving as the preliminary step before potential hydrocarbon test drilling.

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