Comparing Reserves Estimates in Anticipation of Increased Leasing Activity
Earlier this month the US Department of the Interior announced the first steps in a new program for offshore oil and gas leases in the outer continental shelf. This new program is expected to include significantly more lease sales than the current program, which has 3 lease sales scheduled over the next 5 years. This announcement coincides with the release of two reports within the last month on domestic hydrocarbon production forecasts; BOEM 2025 Estimated Oil and Gas Reserves Report Gulf of America OCS Region, and EIA Annual Energy Outlook 2025. This week we will review the recently published reports to get a better understanding of predicted reserves, and compare against existing wells and production forecasts in TGS Well Data Analytics.
Starting with the EIA Annual Energy Outlook, there are some interesting top-line predictions. First, the EIA predicts that domestic crude oil and lease condensate supply will peak by 2030, before declining by 1-2% annually through 2050. Second, the EIA predicts that oil prices will maintain at $80/bbl through 2032, before increasing by 1% annually through 2050. But the more relevant figures on expected reserves by region and play can be found in the Energy Outlook Assumptions document, where they assess that the total technically recoverable reserves in the Gulf total nearly 30 billion barrels. This includes proven reserves (4.9 Bbbl) and unproven reserves (19.8 Bbbl) from areas currently available for leasing, as well as unproven reserves (4.9 Bbbl) from areas not currently available for leasing until 2033. Further in the document the EIA lists major announced deepwater discoveries with estimated reserves and estimated start of production. Most notable among these discoveries include Argos Mad Dog Phase 2 GC825 (648 MMBOE), Whale AC772 (486 MMBOE), Shenandoah WR051/052 (417 MMBOE), and Anchor GC807 (403 MMBOE). Figure 1 shows these 4 discoveries in Well Data Analytics with existing wells and production. Although the EIA report was released in April 2025, many of the reserves estimates from the assumptions are as of January 2023. The Whale and Anchor fields have already started production in August 2024 and January 2025 respectively, while the Shenandoah field is under development with first oil expected in Q2 of 2025.
Figure 1. Notable Discoveries with Significant Estimated Reserves.
Moving to the BOEM Estimated Oil and Gas Reserves Report, the headline number here is estimated remaining reserves of 5.77 Bbbl. This figure is likely equivalent to the proven reserves estimate of 4.9 Bbbl from the EIA report and does not include any unproven reserves estimates. In the methodology section, BOEM notes that they used three techniques for estimating reserves: analog, volumetric, and performance. Using Well Data Analytics, we can qualify the performance method of reserves estimation by aggregating forecasted production for all active wells (Figure 2). Based on TGS forecasts of currently active wells, we estimate remaining reserves to be 6.4 Bbbl.
Figure 2. Remaining Gulf Reserves from Existing Wells.
Although the two reports we reviewed for this article have some disagreement on the full scope of remaining resources in the Gulf, there is a broad consensus that there are still significant proven and unproven reserves available to be developed if the macroeconomic conditions are favorable. Using Well Data Analytics, we were able to validate that even within existing developed fields there is a long runway of remaining production.
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