Increased activity in the Exploration and Production (E&P) sector will be the primary driver in pushing oil and gas capital expenditure (capex) to an enormous $1,039 billion for 2012, states the latest report by natural resources experts GlobalData.

The new report predicts that the total oil and gas capex will increase by 13.4 percent this year over the 2011 total of $916 billion, as oil companies intensify upstream operations across locations as diverse as offshore Brazil, the Gulf of Mexico and the Arctic Circle.

Investor confidence in new upstream projects is being driven by the increasing number of oil and gas discoveries (242 last year alone), combined with consistently high oil prices and the arrival of new technologies that are giving the major firms access to deep offshore reserves that were previously technically and financially unviable.