This year, Westwood is releasing its flagship State of Exploration report as a six-part series.
- Part 1 – High Impact Exploration Drilling reviews global drilling performance and significant discoveries.
- Part 2 – High Impact Exploration Company Benchmarking analyses the activity, performance and portfolios of leading explorers between 2021 and 2025.
Following the release of Parts 1 and 2, the Wildcat team brings together the key takeaways in this latest insight.
High Impact Exploration Drilling
In 2025, just 64 high impact wells were completed, a 17% drop from 2024 and the lowest annual total Westwood has ever recorded (since 2008). These wells delivered 4.8bnboe of discovered resource at a 31% commercial success rate (CSR), a slight improvement on the 28-29% commercial success rate in 2023-2024.
Figure 1: Commercial discovered resource and success rates 2021-2025. Source: Westwood Wildcat.
Key discoveries were made at Bumerangue in the pre-salt Lower Cretaceous carbonate play in the Santos Basin Brazil, at Mopane-3X and Capricornus in the Upper and Lower Cretaceous plays in the Orange Basin, Namibia, as well as the Hai Su Vang discovery in the Oligocene sandstone play in the Cuu Long Basin, Vietnam. Key failures were drilled in the Niger Delta, Suriname-Guyana, Herodotus, Andaman and Ulleung basins.
Over the five year period 2021-2025, 373 high impact wells delivered ~29bnboe of potentially commercial resource at a 30% CSR. The five year trends show the industry moving further into deeper water, with 16% of wells drilled in ultra-deepwater in 2025. Only two of the 37 wells completed in ultra-deepwater between 2021-2025 made a commercial discovery (5% CSR) despite technical success rates being in-line with other water depths. The two discoveries were at Venus in the Orange Basin, Namibia and Megah in the Sabah Basin, Malaysia.
Figure 2: High impact exploration performance 2021-2025 by water depth and reservoir age. Source: Westwood Wildcat.
Cretaceous plays have dominated the past five years, accounting for 46% of the primary targets in wells drilled and 65% of the resource discovered (~18.8bnboe). The Lower Cretaceous delivered 68% of the Cretaceous resource (~12.7bnboe), with significantly larger discoveries than other reservoir ages over the five-year period. High impact exploration in Jurassic and Triassic plays delivered the lowest commercial success rates, at 18% in the Jurassic and no success within the Triassic. Tertiary plays delivered a 30% CSR in line with the global average in 2021-2025.
77% of exploration wells targeted clastic reservoirs over the past five years, with the 63% of these being deepwater turbidites. Carbonate reservoirs delivered a higher commercial success rate, at 31% versus 29%, as well as larger average discovery sizes and lower finding costs than sandstones.
Frontier exploration is not renewing the emerging play opportunity set fast enough. Frontier play drilling has been steady in recent years, but commercial success rates remain low averaging 13% over the last five years. The scale of the 38 new plays opened in the past 15 years is generally modest with a median play size of ~500mmboe. Only 15 emerging play wells were drilled in 2025, with previously significant plays such as the Upper Cretaceous in Suriname-Guyana now maturing.
Only eight of the 38 new plays opened since 2011 have proved to be greater than 1bnboe. In more than half the new plays, more than 90% of total play resource is captured in the opening discovery with generally limited running room for follow-on drilling.
In an era of higher commodity prices, and a continued demand for oil and gas, the case for more exploration is stronger than ever. Capital discipline and industry consolidation has undoubtedly constrained exploration budgets since the 2014 price crash, but now the limited opportunity set of attractive high impact drilling opportunities may prove the bigger hurdle for increased drilling.
High Impact Exploration Company Benchmarking
High impact exploration remains concentrated among a relatively small group of companies. 173 companies participated in high impact wells in 2021-2025, however, 103 of these only drilled one or two wells, and only 10 companies drilled 25 or more wells in the five year period.
Figure 3: Distribution of companies participating in high impact exploration drilling in 2021-2025, coloured by company size. Source: Westwood Wildcat.
Supermajors and NOCs continue to dominate high impact exploration, accounting for eight of the top 10 most active explorers in 2021-2025 and 65% of high impact well equity in 2025. The role of the small and medium companies has diminished over the past decade shrinking from 26% of the equity in 2016 to 16% in 2025. Supermajors discovered 36% of the overall resource in 2025, although small companies delivered a better success rate at ~35%.
Exploration strategies for the most active companies have varied widely, with significant variation even in individual peer groups. QatarEnergy had the largest geographical footprint, drilling 27 plays in 16 different countries, whilst Shell tested 29 different plays in 15 countries the five year period.
Figure 4: Average discovery size, finding cost and commercial success rate for the most active high impact explorers 2021-2025. Source: Westwood Wildcat.
Over the five year period, BP ranked first for net discovered resource at the time of drilling, at 3.1bnboe, followed by Eni at 2.6bnboe, Petrobras at 2.2bnboe and CNOOC at 2.0bnboe. Eni stands out as the strongest all-round performer, combining 2.6bnboe of net discovered resource with a 47% commercial success rate and finding costs <$0.5/boe. CNOOC and Hess delivered the highest commercial success rates at 58% and 51% respectively, while ExxonMobil led the supermajors at 38%.
Frontier play exploration strategy analysis over a 15-year period shows that companies involved in the initial play-opening discovery captured 85% of total discovered resource in the new plays opened since 2011. By contrast, companies attempting a ‘fast follower’ strategy, entering the play only after the frontier play opening well had been drilled, only discovered 6% of the overall play resource. The analysis demonstrates the importance of early acreage entry and participation in play-opening wells for resource capture through exploration.
The State of Exploration 2026 series provides a comprehensive analysis of conventional high impact exploration globally. It investigates the subsurface drivers behind exploration performance, as well as the competitive landscape, offshore seismic acquisition, recent acreage entries and the wider outlook for exploration.
The report is available to subscribers of Westwood’s Wildcat product. Non-subscribers can purchase the report, in full or in part, here.
