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The field's potential has put it at the center of a possibly explosive territorial dispute. Mobil is rushing to sink a well this summer in defiance of a claim by China, which insists that its international waters extend as far as the Blue Dragon site. Beijing meanwhile has granted a small U.S. oil company, Crestone Energy Corp., a concession just east of Blue Dragon in waters claimed by Vietnam; Hanoi is looking for a company to explore the same site.
COLOMBIA. The Cusiana field yielded nothing more than a pair of dry holes before the Triton Energy Corp. of Dallas staked a claim in the mid-'80s. Because Triton lacked the capital to explore the area, it sold an 80% share to British Petroleum, which took in France's Total as an equal partner. Today the consortium is part of a joint venture with the state oil company, Ecopetrol, which is developing an estimated 2 billion bbl. in Cusiana and the neighboring Cupiagua field. That could be just the beginning: the partners' plan to invest $6 billion over the next 40 months to bring in Cusiana and explore other sites in the foothills of the Andes.
The oil bonanza has not only turned once sleepy villages into bawdy boomtowns but also given guerrillas of the National Liberation Army attractive targets. The rebels have sabotaged oil installations more than 500 times since 1987, and have lately taken to kidnapping and assassinating local officials in an attempt to extort some of the oil wealth that has flooded into the region. "It's a plague," said Gustavo Wilches, governor of the area where Cusiana is located, in January. "The discovery of petroleum is destroying us." The very day he spoke, guerrillas shot down a helicopter over an oil field and others kidnapped the husband of one of the area's most powerful politicians.
PAPUA NEW GUINEA. "We started from a postage stamp. Our toehold was as small as that." So recalls Greg Gurbach, a field construction manager for Chevron, of the company's initial sortie into the mountainous jungle that surrounds Lake Kutubu, one of the most pristine spots in the South Pacific. The year was 1986; Chevron headed a consortium that had come to explore a reservoir 1.5 miles beneath the jungle floor that was thought to contain 225 million bbl. of high-quality oil.
Tapping the crude was one thing, getting it to market another. Without roads or navigable waterways, Chevron built a 165-mile pipeline that followed the Kikori River to the Gulf of Papua, where the first tanker filled up in 1992.
Chevron also had to contend with irate Foi and Fasu tribesmen who, armed with spears, axes and bows and arrows, occupied the project's airstrip and attacked some company officials. The tribespeople demanded a more favorable split of the oil royalties between them and the provincial government and fulminated over damage to their hunting and fishing grounds. The take was subsequently improved from a 20%-80% division to 30%-70%; after Chevron built medical facilities for the villagers and buried the pipeline, peace was restored.