Probabilistic resource/cost appraisals for evaluation of petroleum resources
Donald Gautier A and Peter Mccabe AAustralian School of Petroleum, The University of Adelaide.
The APPEA Journal 55(2) 451-451 https://doi.org/10.1071/AJ14086
Published: 2015
Abstract
In the increasingly open global marketplace, unconventional resources such as coal seam methane, shale gas and shale oil are now the marginal (highest cost) sources of supply in some regions and are seen as potential important components of energy policy for many nations, including Australia.
Large in-place hydrocarbon volumes, low-recovery efficiency and slim profit margins characterise the development of most of these resources around the world. Although they contribute a relatively small percentage of global petroleum production, they greatly influence world commodity prices and pose challenges to developers, investors and policy makers.
Traditional assessments of in-place or technically recoverable hydrocarbon volumes alone are inadequate for evaluating the economic viability of these unconventional resources. By integrating probabilistic geology-based assessments with estimates of undiscounted life-cycle capital and operating expenditures, however, single parameter resource assessments become two-parameter resource cost appraisals, which can be used to:
benchmark alternative oil or gas technologies;
quantify the effects of technological change on high-cost developments; and,
compare alternative resource development opportunities.
The integration of geological and technological information thus provides an important tool for the effective evaluation of potential projects and for setting energy policy.
Donald Gautier recently retired after 36 years at the US Geological Survey. He now runs his own consulting company and he is also an adjunct professor at the Australian School of Petroleum at the University of Adelaide. Among many other roles, Donald headed up the USGS 1995 National Assessment of Oil and Gas Resources and the USGS 2009 Circum-Arctic Resource Assessment. He is a world leader in developing methodologies for the assessment of petroleum resources and he is interested in the assessment of unconventional resources in sedimentary basins, where there is limited data compared to the more mature provinces of North America. Donald has been a keynote speaker at numerous meetings worldwide and was awarded the United States Department of Interior Distinguished Service Award in 2013. |
Peter McCabe is the South Australian State Chair in Petroleum Geology at the Australian School of Petroleum, University of Adelaide. He has 40 years of experience in petroleum-related geology and has worked for universities, industry and government research agencies in the UK, Canada, US and Australia. Peter’s research interests are in sequence stratigraphy, coal-bearing strata, fluvial and coastal strata, and resource assessment. He is a past president of the SEPM Society of Sedimentary Geology and the American Geosciences Institute. He has been a distinguished lecturer for AAPG, PESA and the Geological Society of America. |
References
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