By JAMES KANTER
Refining towers at the Zawiya oil refinery near Tripoli, Libya.
BRUSSELS — Opportunities in oil and natural gas have rarely been so bountiful. New finds and technological advances and fresh access to some countries are pushing exploration and production into areas once considered peripheral.
Some of the most promising new fields are in deep water off the coast of Brazil. Experts say they could yield as much oil as the North Sea. There have been significant strikes off the coast of French Guiana, north of Brazil, and off Ghana in West Africa.
Iraq is opening up after years of sanctions and war. It could be a second Saudi Arabia.
Russia is increasing production in its Arctic regions, while Canada is steadily producing more oil from its abundant tar sands.
In the United States, the vast deposits of natural gas found in shale rock could transform the country into a major energy exporter.
Those prospects “will certainly have significant impacts on the energy map,” said Maria van der Hoeven, the newly appointed executive director of the International Energy Agency, which advises member countries, including Germany, Japan and the United States, on energy policy.
The prospects are coming into view as revolution and instability threaten new investments in resource-rich countries like Libya and Iraq and after a nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in Japan that prompted Germany to declare it would phase out nuclear technology.
Fewer reactors should drastically increase demand for electricity from natural gas, while lower-than-expected growth in energy exports from the Middle East and North Africa could “radically alter the global energy balance,” Ms. van der Hoeven said.
Yet the new opportunities also present companies and investors with a dizzying array of risks — including the high cost of development and exploitation and the possibility that energy prices could fall, especially if the global economy slows drastically and energy demand slackens.
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