Murphy Oil Discovers Southeast Asia’s Biggest Oil Find in Two Decades

Major Oil Discovery in Southeast Asia Offers Hope for Vietnam

Murphy Oil has achieved what experts are calling Southeast Asia’s most significant oil discovery in twenty years, presenting Vietnam with a unique opportunity to counteract its ongoing decline in crude oil output.

The American energy company announced that its subsidiary successfully completed drilling the H?i S? Vàng-2X (HSV-2X) appraisal well in Block 15-2/17, located in the C?u Long Basin approximately 40 miles off Vietnam’s coast. According to Wood Mackenzie, this find is the largest in the region since the early 2000s.

The well encountered 429 feet of oil-bearing rock across two separate reservoirs and achieved a test flow rate of 6,000 barrels per day of 37° API crude. Murphy Oil has now increased its estimate for recoverable resources to the higher end of the previously stated range of 170–430 million barrels of oil equivalent, with further potential from shallower layers that have yet to be fully evaluated.

“Large-scale oil discoveries are rare in this predominantly gas-focused region,” commented Angus Rodger, head of Asia-Pacific upstream research at Wood Mackenzie. He highlighted that HSV is the third-largest oil find in Southeast Asia since 2000, surpassed only by Indonesia’s Banyu Urip and Malaysia’s Gumusut fields.

This breakthrough comes at a crucial time for Vietnam, whose oil production has dropped sharply over the past twenty years—from about 365,000 barrels per day in 2005 to under 120,000 barrels per day projected for 2025—due to aging fields and a lack of new major discoveries.

Eric Hambly, CEO of Murphy Oil, described the result as “a pivotal moment” for the company’s operations in Vietnam. He emphasized that the HSV-2X success demonstrates the commercial viability of the H?i S? Vàng field and underpins plans for broader development. Murphy intends to continue appraisal drilling with the HSV-3X and HSV-4X wells, both part of its $1.1–$1.3 billion capital investment plan for 2026.

In addition to increasing Vietnam’s domestic oil output, this discovery could spark renewed interest in the country’s ongoing offshore licensing round, especially in the mature yet underexplored C?u Long Basin. The find proves that substantial oil reserves can still be uncovered in established regions.

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