Oil and gas companies today face an era of unprecedented change where the exploration of new frontiers will determine their long-term viability. With the advent of advanced computer assisted exploration analysis and increased focus on offshore reserves many experts now believe that this may bring a "new oil boom" rather than the era of depleted resources and forced rationing.
Increasingly nations worldwide are looking for alternate sources of oil and gas and are finding them off their coastal regions. Developing nations long denied the equity to improve their position in the world economy have suddenly discovered a previously untapped new resource. Tricoastal Oil & Gas Ltd.'s working hand in hand with our primary project partners is insuring that these new resources are found and then safely and cleanly brought to the world’s energy markets to the benefit of all concerned.
The era of gigantic new oil finds may not yet be over. However, in order to meet the consistently escalating world demand for oil, exploration of smaller reserves in ever more remote areas is urgently required. The remaining oil finds yet to be discovered are likely to be in the "new frontiers" in oil exploration.

The technological development that has taken place to meet the challenges of exploration in frontier regions is the vanguard of innovation in the oil industry today. The technological challenges of exploration of new frontiers are many sided. They stretch from drilling techniques, logistics of supply chains to remote oilrigs, demanding climates, HR-management to subsea and delivery systems. With environmentally friendly approaches having become a constant priority in the oil industry, this adds an extra dimension to each of these challenges.

Emerging economies such as China have drastically increased the demand for new oil and gas reserves. China's consumption of crude oil has grown at an annual rate of nearly six percent over the past decade, while the growth rate of crude oil supply was less than two percent during the same period. China's petroleum consumption exceeded 200 million tons in 2001, ranking the third in the world after the United States and Japan, and the figure by 2010 is estimated to reach 300 million tons.

China became a net importing country of petroleum in 1993. The net import volume surpassed 65 million tons last year, accounting for nearly 30 percent of the total oil demand that year. Although the growth of China's oil production has slowed in recent years, the country still has great potential in oil and gas exploitation. China has more than 500 oil-rich basins with about 150 evaluated. According to a recent survey and evaluation, China's total petroleum resource is estimated at 110 billion tons, and the total volume of natural gas is about 53 trillion cubic meters. At present, only 28 percent of land petroleum and six percent of natural gas had been explored, far below the world exploration rate.

When compared with many other countries, China's exploration of offshore petroleum is still at the beginning phase, and about 80 percent of oil resources were waiting for further exploration. West Africa dominates the international deepwater market and will attract over 40 percent of the US$ 48 billion in deepwater exploration and production spending projected for the next five years making it the world’s largest deepwater and subsea market. Many of the lessons learned off the West African coastline are now being applied in from the Gulf of Thailand to the South China Sea. Tricoastal Oil & Gas Ltd. is lending its broad base of expertise in developing these new areas of exploration to the production phase and beyond.