"Never count your chickens till they have hatched" and "Don’t foul your own nest"
Two avian-based maxims to live by, whether applied to man, flying beast or oil company.
As proof of our first proverb, BP today announced that they would have to pump billions of dollars more into their Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli (ACG) fields in Azerbaijan to fend off drastically declining yields.
Projected to produce 1 million barrels per day, at its height in 2010 the fields peaked at 820,000 bpd and have since fallen to 684,000 bpd in H1 2012. With the supermajor slated to pay up to a further $17 billion in fines after recent court proceedings into 2010’s Deepwater Horizon blowout, dud eggs may have come at a bad time.
Speaking of fouled nests, Exxon and Russian partner OAO Rosneft have announced their intention to commence drilling in the remote Kara Sea, north of Siberia. Remaining frozen for more than nine months a year, this inhospitable Arctic arena is said to be underpinned by enough oil to supply the entire world for five years.
One small problem - aside from extreme cold and sea ice: it was used as a nuclear dumping ground by the USSR for a quarter of a century, which may leave icy feathers ruffled.
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