Royal Dutch Shell announced Wednesday it found another 100 million barrels of oil in the Gulf of Mexico.
The new find 60 miles south of the Louisiana coast, right next to existing oil production infrastructure, and near many Gulf Coast oil refineries. If Shell develops the discovery, it could boost oil production from a region that has seen its output decline for years.
“It’s a beautiful discovery with good-quality oil in a good-quality reservoir,” said Martijn Dekker, Shell’s vice president for appraisal and hydrocarbon maturation.
Americans could benefit from new oil discoveries like Shell’s because they help keep gasoline prices low.
The new discovery is further evidence the U.S. oil boom isn’t likely to end. The U.S. produced more oil and natural gas than any other country in 2014 according the Energy Information Administration. American oil production in 2014 was 80 percent higher than production in 2008. In June 2015, the United States produced an average of about 9.3 million barrels of crude oil per day. This huge increase in production over the past several years can be directly attributed to the success of exploiting tight oil formations and shale gas via hydraulic fracturing.
America controls the world’s largest untapped oil reserve — the Green River Formation in Colorado. This formation alone contains up to 3 trillion barrels of untapped oil shale, half of which may be recoverable. That’s five and a half times the proven reserves of Saudi Arabia. This single geologic formation could contain more oil than the rest of the world’s proven reserves combined.
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