Giant Oil Fields and World Oil Resources

Assesses conventional known and prospective recoverable world crude oil resources by describing and analyzing giant (500 million barrels or more) oil fields. The report lists 272 known giant oil fields containing 76.7 percent of the 1011.5 billion barrels of recoverable crude oil resources as of 1975. The 33 known super-giant (5 billion barrels or more) fields contain more than half of the total. The number of giant fields discovered has been at a high plateau since the early 1960s. The amount discovered in giant fields has dropped sharply during this same period because of a precipitous decline in the number of super-giant discoveries. Ultimate conventional world oil resources are estimated to be between 1700 and 2300 billion barrels. Because few super-giants are likely to be discovered and the discovery rate of other giant fields will soon decline, most future additions will come from additional recovery from known fields, not new discoveries.