SEDIMENTARY BASINS AND HYDROCARBON RESOURCES ON A GLOBAL SCALE: INSIGHTS FROM ROMANIA

Global economies and infrastructure still depend heavily on petroleum-based products. Despite significant initiatives aimed at transitioning to renewable energy, the oil and gas sector continues to play a key role in shaping both the global economy and political landscape. Organizations like the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the U.S. Geological Survey, and the BP Statistical Review of World Energy have gathered extensive data reflecting this ongoing reliance. Oil reserves are not uniformly distributed across the globe. The Middle East holds the majority of the world's confirmed reserves, followed by countries such as United States and the Canada, as well as regions in Latin America, Africa, and the former Soviet states. Hydrocarbon deposits of a basin, or even part of it, led to the concept of an oil province that is mainly based on the analysis of geological setting. The defining of a petroleum system or province considers several criteria: geographic criteria (especially the extent and volume of rocks of interest); geological criteria (type of basin and its classification, stratigraphy) and petroleum criteria (potential and volume of discoveries, type of reservoir). After classifying giant oil fields according to basin and tectonic setting, several conclusions were drawn and a hierarchy was established: passive continental margins facing large ocean basins host of about 31% of giant deposits; continental rifts and overlying sag basins contain about 30% of the world's largest oil fields; the final collision belts between two continents form major basin that contains for approximately 24% of global giant fields; and continental arcs at convergent plate boundary, strike-slip systems, and subduction margins together host 15% of the world's giant fields. Looking ahead, the direction of oil exploration will be influenced not only by the quantity and type of resources available in the mentioned areas, but also by geopolitical dynamics and technological advances. Improved seismic imaging and detailed reservoir analysis are expected to play a greater role, especially in the development of unconventional resources such as tight oil, tight gas and shale formations. Romania can be considered the second largest oil producer and the third largest gas producer in the EU. Most known oil and gas fields in Romania have reached maturity, but the exploration of deeper structures has led to several recent discoveries. Current research techniques based on high-resolution seismic images correlated with a complex geophysical well investigation are expected to reveal new hydrocarbon accumulations both onshore areas (in orogenic or foreland type basins) and offshore in the western Black Sea basin. In order to have a clear picture of the development directions for oil and gas fields, this study analyzed data and statistics provided by specialized institutions and literature, synthesizing them in a clear and suggestive way possible according to the diagram below. The paper represents a first step in guiding future exploration efforts.