More than half of the world's planned licensing rounds are likely to be canceled this year, according to Rystad Energy.

More than half of the world’s planned licensing rounds are likely to be canceled this year.

That’s according to new impact analysis forecasts from Rystad Energy, which outlined the combined effect of the pandemic and the oil price war as the main drivers of the likely cancelations.

According to Rystad, rounds will likely be canceled in 2020 in the below countries.

United Kingdom

Ukraine

Romania

Germany

Colombia

Brazil

Ecuador

Dominican Republic

Thailand

Uzbekistan

Myanmar

UAE

New Zealand

Ivory Coast

Algeria

Tanzania

Senegal

Somalia

Liberia

Ghana

Equatorial Guinea

Angola

South Sudan

Nigeria

“The unlikely upcoming lease rounds represent around 54 percent – a worrisome sign for global exploration,” Rystad’s Senior Upstream Analyst Aatisha Mahajan said in a company statement.

“We expect to see a large drop in awarded acreage this year compared with 2019. In percentage terms, the drop in offshore acreage could match the nearly 60 percent decline seen from 2014 to 2015, while awarded onshore acreage could shrink by almost one-third compared with a 16 percent drop after the previous downturn,” Mahajan added.

In its analysis, Rystad also outlined a list of countries with tentative rounds and rounds that are likely to go ahead. Licensing rounds in the United States, Suriname, Egypt, Russia and China “hang in the balance and are marked as tentative” and rounds in Malaysia, Trinidad and Tobago, Norway, India, Lebanon, and Canada are likely to proceed, according to Rystad.

Last week, Rystad estimated that, following the price war and pandemic outbreak, offshore drillers would see contract cancellations of up to $3 billion to 2021. The company also estimated last week that several countries had already shut-in hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil production after the outbreak of the coronavirus and the price war.

Rystad is an independent energy research and business intelligence company based in Oslo, Norway.

To contact the author, email andreas.exarheas@rigzone.com