Australian Oil Industry Needs to Add Reserves, Report Finds

Australia’s A$24 billion oil and gas industry needs to add 120 million barrels of crude oil reserves every year to maintain the nation’s rate of production, the country’s petroleum industry body said.

The industry must increase offshore exploration drilling by 67 percent to 75 wells a year if those reserves are to come from new discoveries, the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association said today in a report released for the industry’s 2006 conference. Exploration spending is currently about A$1 billion a year.

Bloomberg