Looking for Oil Eldorados

The search for new energy pushes into Amazon jungles and Antarctic ice

Hundreds of feet below the thick Antarctic ice, fully submerged oil pumping stations sit on the floor of the Weddell Sea. Onshore, battered by bitter cold and shrieking winds, oilworkers control the steady stream of rich, black crude that flows from the underwater wells through pipelines and into coastal storage tanks. Science fiction? Yes--at least for the moment. But later this year Japan and West Germany will begin the first serious drilling for oil in Antarctica, a continent that most geologists believe contains large quantities of crude. This new push is just another example of the increasing worldwide energy scramble.

Using computers for seismic surveys, and new drilling technologies to dig deeper, geologists are looking everywhere, from the frozen Arctic to the jungles of Africa and South America. With bet-a-billion gusto, they are searching for new energy Eldorados.

This is not the first threatened global oil shortage. After both World Wars I and II, energy Cassandras in both Europe and the U.S. warned that rapidly surging demands for oil would shortly outpace production and the then known supplies. But on both occasions, higher oil prices prompted new exploration and, eventually, enough new oil finds to turn the looming famine into a feast. Now the rising costs and sometimes uncertain supplies of OPEC crude, together with the decontrol of U.S. oil prices, are prompting yet another all-out search for new oil.

Oilmen are quietly confident that the global energy hunt will eventually pay off, though they readily admit that there are probably few new super gushers still waiting to be discovered. Yet even if the biggest fields have probably already been found, only two-thirds of the world's 600 major oil basins have been drilled so far. That means that anywhere from 500 billion to 1,250 billion bbl. of oil may still be discovered. Since the most accessible areas of the world were searched first, any new oil bonanzas are unfortunately likely to lie in harsh, remote areas that will be difficult to exploit.

Energy companies guard their petroleum intelligence as carefully as a leprechaun protecting his pot of gold, but they admit that the most promising areas seem to include:

THE CONTINENTAL U.S. About 2.2 million wells have been sunk in the U.S. since 1859, four times as many as in the rest of the non-Communist world. Thus no experts expect any new Spindletops from conventional fields in Texas, Oklahoma and California. Still, the Geological Survey estimates that between 12.5 billion and 38 billion bbl. of oil are waiting to be found offshore. One of the most promising areas on land is the so-called Western Overthrust Belt in the rugged, mountainous area from southern Colorado to the Canadian border. Experts believe the area could contain many fields of 100 million bbl. or more--adding up to perhaps 14 billion bbl. of oil and 52 trillion cu. ft. of natural gas.

ALASKA AND ARCTIC CANADA. Geologists reckon that this may be one of the world's best bets. Mobil and Exxon are looking in "iceberg alley" off Canada's east coast, and a dozen companies have been aggressively exploring the Canadian Arctic, especially the Beaufort Sea, where significant oil and gas have been found. But in U.S. territory near the famous North Slope fields oil explorers have not sunk many wells because of court actions brought by Indians and environmentalists who are worried about, among other things, disturbing the migration of the bowhead whale.

THE MIDDLE EAST AND EUROPE. Few oilmen dispute that a very large part of the world's undiscovered oil lies in the Middle East. But with national coffers overflowing with oil revenues, OPEC countries are not making serious efforts to uncover more of it. U.S. and European oil companies are exploring Egypt's western desert, on the assumption that the oil does not stop at the Libyan border, as well as in the Sinai and the Gulf of Suez. Drilling is also continuing in Europe's North Sea, around Norway and Britain. West of the Shetland Islands, off Scotland, the state-owned British National Oil Corp. is test drilling in 4,500 ft. of water, the second greatest depth ever.

LATIN AMERICA. "In terms of undiscovered oil, Mexico is now where the U.S. was in the 1930s and '40s," says Houston Geologist Larry Meckel. "It could end up being the second or third largest producer in the world." But as with the OPEC nations, the country is husbanding its resources by holding back production. Farther down in South America, efforts are now being concentrated offshore, with Exxon and Shell preparing to drill around Tierra Del Fuego, where Charles Darwin once sailed on the H.M.S. Beagle, and the Falkland Islands. A promising area offshore of the heavy oil deposits of Lake Maracaibo is not being tapped because both Venezuela and Colombia claim the region. Politics also hinders Brazil's explorations. The government has invited the oil majors in, but it has still restricted foreign exploration within 155 miles of its borders (including areas lying next to Venezuela, Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, where oil has already been found) because of national security.

AFRICA AND ASIA. Chevron's discovery in the swamps of Sudan and new finds offshore of Nigeria and some other west coast countries have renewed interest in the African continent. Amoco recently sank a wildcat well in the Seychelles merely on the ground that Madagascar, about 700 miles away, has an estimated 10 billion bbl. of tar on its surface. Where tar is found, oil is usually not far away. On the other side of the Indian Ocean, India has reportedly found indications of an oil bonanza off its southeast coast. Michael Morrow, publisher of Hong Kong's Petroleum News, told TIME that "on the basis of preliminary drilling, Indian officials believe they have found the largest offshore oil basin anywhere in the world."

THE U.S.S.R. AND CHINA. The Soviet Union is already the world's largest oil producer, with reserves roughly one-third greater than those of Saudi Arabia. The CIA, however, in a controversial study in 1977, predicted that the Soviet Union would be a net importer of oil by 1985. Now chilled U.S.-Soviet relations will stem the flow of Western technology that could help increase production and turn up new fields in the vast unexplored areas of Siberia. In China, there is excitement about the potential oil bonanzas off the country's 2,800-mile coastline. More than 30 oil companies are conducting seismic surveys. Preliminary estimates sug gest that the South and East China seas, the Bohai Gulf and the Yellow Sea could contain between 20 billion and 60 billion bbl. of recoverable oil.

Behind all the enthusiastic drilling around the globe, oilmen know that they are taking giant gambles. Drilling remains a very chancy hit or miss affair. The history of oil is full of promising areas that turned out to be relatively dry. More recently, the companies eager for the right to look for oil in the Atlantic Ocean's Baltimore Canyon, off New Jersey, paid the Federal Government $1.1 billion in the first lease sale. Nine major explorers have spent about $463 million on drilling and related costs for 22 wells. The results to date: four gas wells and 18 dry holes.

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