Newfoundland heads downhill … unless

In the absence of any new discoveries or development of satellite pools, offshore Newfound and is headed for a sharp decline in production from 138 million barrels this year to 84 million barrels by 2011, the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board has predicted.

Over the next four years, the three current producing fields — Hibernia, Terra Nova and White Rose — face a decrease of about 30 percent, putting the region on a possible path to a mere 3 million barrels by 2030, the regulator said.

But it is not all doom-and-gloom.

A successful resumption of fiscal negotiations for the Hebron-Ben Nevis project could inject 36 million barrels to the annual total, while an array of satellite pools located within 30 miles of the three producing fields is expected to feed into the total.

That doesn’t even take into account the chances of a major find in areas such as the Orphan basin.

Of the satellites, Husky Energy, operator of the White Rose project, has three fields holding 214 million barrels it plans to bring on stream, the first of them by late 2010.

Others could make their contribution as output from the trio of major fields starts to shrink, opening up extra processing capacity.

The importance of the industry to Newfoundland was outlined by CNLOPB in its 2006-07 annual report.

It said the companies have spent C$21.5 billion on exploration and development, pumping up the province’s gross domestic product by 36 percent since Hibernia entered the commercial phase in 1997.

Over the past decade, 750 million barrels of crude oil have been produced, leaving just over 2 billion barrels, while the untapped natural gas resource is estimated at 10.2 trillion cubic feet and natural gas liquids at 478 million barrels.

—Gary Park