Classification and Undiscovered Resource Assessment of Oil and Gas Bearing Basins in South America

Major oil and gas discoveries have been made continuously in deep water area in South America recently, which has attracted the attention of oil companies in various countries. The undiscovered resources potential is an important basis for decision-making of oil companies, so it is necessary to study it. Controlled by the subduction of the Pacific plate and the pull apart of the Atlantic plate, the South American continent has undergone a complex plate evolution process and formed different types of sedimentary basins. The size of 4348 reported oil and gas field discoveries and petroleum geological characteristics in South America are studied. Large discoveries of oil and gas are concentrated in a few countries, with the vast majority of oil and gas stored in a few large fields. The basins with different exploration levels were evaluated by the main probability method and analogy method respectively. The undiscovered recoverable resources in 38 medium-high degree basins and 18 low-degree basins were estimate at 354 billion barrels and14 billion barrels of oil equivalent, respectively. The volume of undiscovered resources in these studied basins is about 59.4% of all discovered oil and gas recoverable reserves in South America, so there is still a lot of potential for exploration.