With global oil demand on the rise, a new report finds that new conventional fields are taking more than 15 years to come online from discovery, following a trend of increasing development timelines.

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Analysis by the Global Oil and Gas Extraction Tracker (GOGET), an oil extraction project information resource, attributed extended lead times to new projects that are more complex in many ways: geologically, ecologically, economically, politically, and often a combination of these factors.

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“Fifteen-year development cycles mean that companies are making long-term bets on a very uncertain future. At a time when big carbon companies are facing tighter margins and falling oil prices, chasing expensive white elephants seems destined to fail,” said Scott Zimmerman, director of the GOGET project and co-author of the report.

He said spending should be directed towards demand reduction and renewable energy, which have the potential to bring genuine energy security.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the easiest and most accessible fields have been “thoroughly mapped and developed, leaving mainly smaller, deeper and more technically challenging fields.”

This complexity has increased the time from the announcement of a discovery to the sale of the first hydrocarbons on the market.

The period between 1960 and 1980 is considered the peak of oil and gas discovery and exploration. Many of today’s great producers were discovered and came online during those 20 years.

According to GOGET, between 1960 and 1980, fields began production an average of 4.9 years after discovery. Between 2000 and 2009, it took 13 years. Between 2010 and 2020, it took nearly 16 years, and in the first half of the 2020s, the average was 15 years. The trend is valid for 2025, when the fields had an average of 15.1 years.

The extended timelines reflect a shift to deeper, higher-pressure, and more technically complex reservoirs. Offshore developments take approximately three years longer than onshore projects.