Abstract The 1990s have been a decade of success for the TOTAL Group, and this success enabled the company to acquire PETROFINA and ELF in 1999, thus creating the fourth largest major international oil company. This success has largely been established thanks to an exceptionally fast growth in the upstream activities of the group during the decade, whether measured in physical terms—i.e., production and reserve—or in financial terms. This chapter attempts to explain the overall approach and the strategy of TOTAL in developing its upstream portfolio. This strategy has focused on three aspects: reinforcement of exploration and production activities in well-established provinces, the use of innovative technology, and contractual flexibility in countries that have opened or reopened for exploration or development activities. Obviously such countries present higher contractual or political risks than more traditional countries, but they can also offer satisfactory rewards provided proper portfolio management and risk management are considered to be strategic priorities. However, whatever strategies are applied, their successful implementation is the key, and TOTAL has no special recipes to offer in this domain. It has simply, but persistently, tried to stick to common sense recipes: to attract and develop the best possible people, to put the right people in the right jobs, and to mix technical opportunities with commercial reality.

Abstract Thailand’s economy was forecast by the World Bank to grow by 5% in 2008 and gas demand was growing at around 3% per year. It is estimated that around 50% of its gas requirement may need to be imported by 2022 and the bulk of this is expected to come from the Thai-Malaysia Joint Development Area (MTJDA) and from Myanmar. Consequently, there is a drive within Thailand to maximize exploration within the country as well as to look at alternative energy sources. Thailand aims to reduce its proportion of energy consumption from oil from 41 to 31% within the next 15 years, substituting this with natural gas from the Gulf of Thailand while increasing the contribution of natural gas from 29 to 38% (S. Polachan pers. comm. 2007) (Fig. 13.1 ). In the main petroleum producing province, the Gulf of Thailand, production of gas, oil and condensate is still increasing (Fig. 13.2 ). Thailand currently has 19 producing gas fields (18 offshore and one onshore) and 22 oil fields (19 onshore and three offshore). The main basin and field locations are shown in Figure 13.3 . Proven, probable and possible reserves estimated by the Thai Government’s Division of Mineral Fuels (DMF 2007) are listed in Table 13.1 . For the purposes of this chapter, the petroleum geology of Thailand is divided into four main areas (Fig. 13.3 ) as follows: Gulf of Thailand, Tertiary, non-marine to marine basins (oiland gas-prone); Onshore Northern

Abstract: The rift basins of Thailand exhibit remarkable diversity of fault displacement patterns, fault length–displacement characteristics and mapped fault patterns during late rift, and post-rift, stages. These patterns reflect influences by: (1) zones of strength anisotropy in the pre-rift basement; (2) syn-rift fault patterns on post-rift faults; (3) spatial stress deflection, commonly related to irregularities in major fault profiles, and the basement–sediment interface; (4) temporal stress rotation, usually related to changes in the regional plate setting; and (5) varying strength properties (strain hardening or softening) of fault zones during their life. These influences created strongly segmented boundary faults, and long, low-displacement post-rift fault trends. The former are commonly strongly over-displaced, while the latter can be strongly under-displaced with respect to their length compared with typical length:displacement distributions. Seismic interpretation of multi-rift fault patterns requires 3D data to identify the complexities, otherwise the linkage pattern between deeper and shallower faults, and the changing fault strike-directions with depth, may be incorrectly mapped. Incorrect identification of fault patterns as breached relay structures may also arise. Oblique extension, the influence of pre-existing trends and stress rotation in multi-phase rifts provides a more comprehensive explanation for the observed features than the strike-slip interpretation of previous studies.

Abstract Due to the economic importance of its hydrocarbon and coal resources, more is known of the Tertiary than of any other part of the stratigraphic succession in Thailand. Tertiary sedimentary rocks occur both on- and offshore and they are generally associated with rift basins formed in extensional, transtensional or strike –slip settings (Fig. 10.1 ). In the Gulf of Thailand and Central Thailand the rift basins have been covered by extensive post-rift sag basins, while the Mergui Basin is in a post-rift passive margin setting. Thermal subsidence has yet to cover the rift basins of Northern Thailand. The basins trend north-south through the centre of the country onshore, and underlie much of the Gulf of Thailand and Andaman Sea. The Tertiary was a period of considerable tectonic activity and hence the timing of a basin’s subsidence, its location and the nature of its basin-fill and lateral facies variations are all tied to its structural development. The Tertiary structure is discussed by Morley et al. (2011) and further data on the Tertiary stratigraphy and structure are to be found in Ratanasthien (2011) and Racey (2011) ; the wider plate-tectonic context of the Tertiary structure is discussed by Searle & Morley (2011) . Information on the offshore Tertiary basins has been obtained entirely through hydrocarbon exploration and production activities since the late 1960s, and comprises seismic (both 2D and 3D) and borehole data. A number of the onshore basins in Northern and Central Thailand have

Abstract The world’s 877 giant oil and gas fields are those with 500 million bbl of ultimately recoverable oil or gas equivalent. Remarkably, almost all of these 877 giant fields, which by some estimates account for 67% of the world’s petroleum reserves, cluster in 27 regions, or about 30%, of the earth’s land surface. In this paper, we present maps showing the location of all 877 giants located on tectonic and sedimentary basin maps of these 27 key regions. We classify the tectonic setting of the giants in these regions using six simplified classes of the tectonic setting for basins in these regions: (1) continental passive margins fronting major ocean basins (304 giants); (2) continental rifts and overlying sag or “steer’s head” basins (271 giants); (3) collisional margins produced by terminal collision between two continents (173 giants); (4) collisional margins produced by continental collision related to terrane accretion, arc collision, and/or shallow subduction (71 giants); (5) strike-slip margins (50 giants); (6) subduction margins not affected by major arc or continental collisions (8 giants). For giant fields with multiphase histories, we attempt the difficult task of discriminating the single tectonic event/setting we consider to have the most profound effect on hydrocarbon formation, migration, and trapping. Our main classification criterion is the basin style dominating at the most typical stratigraphic and structural level of giant accumulations. Continental passive margins fronting major ocean basins form the dominant tectonic setting, which includes 3 5% of the world’s giant fields. Continental rifts and overlying sag basins, especially failed rifts at the edges or interiors of continents, form the second most common tectonic setting, which includes 3 1 % of the world’s giant fields. T erminal collision belts between two continents and associated foreland basins form the third setting, with 20% of the world’s giant fields. Other setting classes — including foreland basins at collision margins related to terrane accretion, arc collision, and/or shallow subduction; basins in strike-slip margins; and basins in subduction margins — are relatively insignificant; with 14% or less of the total basin population. Our tabulation indicates the importance of extensional settings formed during the early and late stages of oceanic opening for giant accumulations: The rift and passive categories combined account for two-thirds, or 66%, of all 877 giants. Our result differs significantly from previously published giant classifications in which collisional settings form the dominant tectonic setting for oil giants. We propose the following possibilities to explain the dominance of extensional rift and passive margin settings over all other tectonic settings: (1) localization of high-quality source rocks in lacustrine and restricted marine settings during the early rift stage; (2) effectiveness of the sag or passive margin section above rifts to either act as reservoirs for hydrocarbons generated in the rift section and/or to seal hydrocarbons generated in the underlying rift section; (3) tectonic stability following early rifting that allows hydrocarbon sources and reservoirs to remain undisturbed by subsequent tectonic events acting on distant plate boundaries. Trends in the discovery of giants in the period from 1990 to 2000 that we consider likely to continue into the 21st century include (1) the discovery of fields in deep-water basinal settings along passive margins such as Brazil, west Africa, and the Gulf of Mexico associated with nodes of high-quality source-rock areas and stratigraphic traps located using three-dimensional seismic reflection data, (2) continued discoveries of giants in known areas, including expansion of the Persian Gulf hydrocarbon province to the south into Yemen and the Arabian Peninsula and north into Iraq; expansion of the West Siberian Basin in the Arctic offshore area; radial expansion of the Illizi Basin of Algeria, (3) continued discoveries in Southeast Asia, where Cenozoic rift, passive margin, and strike-slip environments all coexist around the South China Sea or in the largely submerged Sunda continent, (4) along-strike expansion of elongate foreland trends in the Rocky Mountains, northern South America, the southern Andes, the Ural-Timan-Pechora and Barents Sea, and the North Slope, and (5) expansion of discoveries in the Black Sea-Caspian region associated with closure and burial of northern Tethyal passive margin or arc-related basins. Despite the association of giant fields with Cenozoic or Mesozoic plate edges (especially failed rifts trending at high angles to continental margins), the possibility always exists for further discovery of “lockbox-type” giants associated with now cratonic interior, but previous Paleozoic or Precambrian plate edges, as exemplified by known Paleozoic and Precambrian hydrocarbon giant clusters in the Permian Basin in the United States, the Illizi Basin of Algeria, and the Siberian Platform.