Deep Sea Oil Fields Rise to 30 Percent of World Total: France’s Total Expert

Deep sea oil fields rise to 30 percent of world total: France’s Total expert

RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov. 9 (Xinhua) — Deep-sea oil fields rise to 30 percent of global oil deposits discovered in the past decade, and deep sea crude represents a growing proportion of world oil production, France’s oil major Total SA said Wednesday.

Seventy four percent of the deposits were discovered by six large companies in the world, namely, BP, Chevron, Exxon, Shell, France’s Total and Brazil’s Petrobras, said Xavier Preel, Total SA’s director of exploration, at Deep Sea Technology conference in Brazil’s Espiritu Santo State.

He said one of the most promising regions for exploration was off the west coast of Africa, where both Petrobras and Total are now working. And Total extracts 650,000 barrels a day from the sea in this region.