Discovering oil and gas is a highly skilled activity. But sometimes the harder question comes afterwards: which resources are actually worth pursuing? Answering it requires sound technical expertise, judgement and the ability to work efficiently.
That's why bp assembled its discovered resource opportunities (DRO) team in 2024, bringing together technical specialists from across the business to identify the opportunities around the world that are the best fit for bp, and which have the potential to create the most value.
"Our job is to identify and secure the best oil and gas opportunities for bp, our partners and the countries where we invest,” says Roshni Moosai, VP, discovered resources, based in Sunbury near London.
At a glance
Meet the specialists helping bp identify the oil and gas resources that could become tomorrow's production opportunities.
The team brings together expertise across subsurface, wells, projects, production and business development.
Since 2024, it has supported bp’s work on opportunities in places including Venezuela, India and Iraq.
Deep analysis, good decisions
Rigorous technical evaluations, covering geology, well performance, facilities and development plans, typically take six to twelve months. The DRO teams wanted to deliver the same level of insight and assurance in a matter of weeks or months.
To accelerate the work without compromising safe outcomes or technical quality, DRO leaders brought together integrated squads of experienced specialists from across bp. Experts in subsurface, wells, projects and operations worked alongside business development colleagues to evaluate each opportunity.
This integrated approach enabled technical and commercial questions to be addressed in parallel, helping the teams reach robust, informed decisions as efficiently as possible.
Team members draw on decades of working on some of bp's biggest producing assets around the world. Among them is Matthew White, who has been involved with major oil and gas developments, including in the UK and Iraq, and now helps assess some of the company's most complex oil opportunities
“The interesting part of this role is that you're looking at resources with huge potential and helping shape what they might become in the future,” he says. “One month you can be looking at a mature producing field, the next you're assessing a resource that hasn't yet been developed.”
From opportunity to production
The team's first task in 2024 was to sift through around 130 potential discovered resources opportunities from around the world. Many involved mature fields where bp believes its experience can help unlock additional value.
They narrowed the list by looking at factors such as resource size, strategic fit, commercial potential and whether bp had the expertise that fit best to the development.
On each project they looked at, they entered digital data rooms provided by current operators or governments, travelled abroad to review information that could not be shared remotely, analysed geological data and well histories, and worked side-by-side with potential partners to build a picture of what each resource could become.
“You're rarely working with perfect information. The job is to understand enough about the opportunity, the risks and the potential so you can make a realistic recommendation,” says Ruben Vanegas, who is now based in the UK after a career spent across six countries.
In addition to understanding the oil and gas beneath the surface, the team must also assess what it would take to turn an opportunity into a producing asset.
Simon Hobbs brings projects expertise into the team and helps assess what would be needed to bring a resource into production, including processing facilities and pipelines.
"Subsurface teams can tell you what's in the ground and business development teams can assess the opportunity," he says. "Our role is to understand what needs to be built, what it could cost and how long it might take."
Delivering results
Their approach has already delivered results. In its first year, the team screened more than 130 opportunities around the world, shortlisted around 15 and helped support eight offers. Six of these have already been agreed or announced.
Those opportunities ranged from mature producing fields where bp could help reverse decline, to discovered resources that had yet to be fully developed.
Some of these include:
The new Technical Services Contract to enhance production in India’s Western Offshore Basin.
An agreement with Venezuela to advance the development of Phase 2 of the Loran field with an estimated 4 trillion cubic feet of recoverable gas resources. That's the same amount of gas needed to meet UK demand for well over a year.
A memorandum of understanding with Libya's National Oil Corporation to evaluate redevelopment and exploration opportunities.
For Eder Lizcano, who leads the DRO gas opportunities team, the work is far from finished.
"We've built a healthy portfolio of opportunities so the company has more choice about where it might want to invest next," says Eder. “Some of the most exciting opportunities are still ahead of us.”
Inside the opportunities
Read the case studies below to see how the team is helping turn technical expertise into new opportunities for bp.
Iraq: a new opportunity for a giant field
When bp's discovered resource opportunities (DRO) team was created in 2024, one of its first major tests was to look at the potential to unlock more production from the oil fields in Kirkuk, Iraq – one of the world’s most significant hydrocarbon basins.
It required expertise from across subsurface, wells, facilities, operations and business development. Working alongside Iraqi counterparts, the team developed redevelopment plans, evaluated options for increasing production and helped shape the technical case that could help underpin future negotiations.
This evaluation took around six months and led to an agreement to support the operator in Kirkuk – the North Oil Company and North Gas Company – to develop more than 3 billion barrels of oil equivalent from the Baba and Avanah domes of the Kirkuk oil field and the adjacent Bai Hassan, Jambur and Khabbaz fields. Since then, bp has announced agreements for international partners ConocoPhillips and Türkiye Petrolleri Anonim Ortaklığı to join the partnership supporting the redevelopment, subject to regulatory approvals.
The Kirkuk project also helped shape the way the DRO team works today. As the team's first major access project evaluation, it provided a chance to test new ways of working and learn how to improve the process further. Those lessons have since been applied to opportunities around the world.
“We've built relationships in Iraq over many years, and that's incredibly important,” says Matthew White, who leads the squad looking at opportunities for oil production. “People know how bp works and the experience we bring from large, complex fields. That trust helps us work together to unlock even more value from a resource.”
India: Unlocking potential
Off the west coast of India lies one of the country’s most prolific oil and gas fields – the Western Offshore Basin. It’s helped meet India's energy needs for more than four decades.
But as the basin's fields matured, it was becoming harder to unlock their full potential.
The country’s national oil company, ONGC, had been successfully working with bp to improve oil and gas recovery from its Mumbai High field. When it launched a tender to assess 50 producing fields and nearby discoveries in the Western Offshore Basin, the DRO team got to work.
They analysed vast amounts of technical data and drew on the expertise across their team to understand what bp could realistically deliver and develop a plan.
Soon after, they made their proposal to ONGC and bp was the successful bidder. That led to ONGC and bp signing in June 2026 a new technical services contract made up of 43 blocks in the Western Offshore Basin.
For the DRO team, it was a clear example of how technical expertise and trusted relationships can open the door to much bigger opportunities.
Meet Ruben
In his 32 years with bp, Ruben Vanegas has worked on almost every kind of oil and gas drilling operation, from onshore to offshore, greenfield to brownfield, across six countries, including Colombia, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Indonesia, Kuwait and the UK.
He’s taken that experience and is now evaluating new oil and gas projects for bp.
As wells manager for the DRO team, he draws on his experience to assess potential opportunities around the world. He looks at the condition of existing wells and the potential risk to people, environment and production, how new wells may look and how much they could produce and cost over the life of a project. He also provides technical assurance across drilling, completions, interventions and well integrity.
But his most important contribution may be judgement. Having planned and delivered wells himself, Ruben knows that an attractive proposal must also be achievable for the teams that eventually inherit it.
“When you have experience of both planning and executing, you don’t want to overpromise,” he says. “Whatever you commit to, someone else in the organization has to fulfil.”
For Ruben, that means balancing ambition with a clear understanding of the technical risks, local conditions and different ways of working across countries. The aim is not simply to win an opportunity, but to give the people delivering it the best chance of success.
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