Prospect Maturation
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Prospect Maturation Course
Introduction:
The prospect maturation process, from a lead to a drillable prospect, is at the heart of the exploration business. This course will cover all aspects of the prospect maturation process: play understanding in the context of regional geological understanding; detailed prospect evaluation; realistic risk & volume assessment consistent with the play understanding and prospect details, and an introduction to exploration economics. Throughout the course there is a strong focus on pragmatic (geo) logical approach for assessing those aspects that are input parameters for a meaningful assessment of prospect risks and volumes, with emphasis on a balanced integration of contributions from different sub-surface disciplines.
Course Objectives:
This course describes the various aspects that need to be considered in the prospect maturation process, including:
- Play development in the context of a sound understanding of the regional geology
- Detailed prospect evaluation and understanding of the critical aspects of traps, reservoirs, seals and charge
- Examples from plays and prospects in different basin settings from around the globe
- Realistic and pragmatic risk and volume assessment, based on the geological understanding of plays and prospects
- An introduction to Unconventional Gas resources, highlighting the main differences between conventional and unconventional exploration
Who Should Attend?
Geoscientists who have been working for several years in exploration and who want to improve their expertise of the prospect maturation process, risk and volume assessment, as well as for their direct supervisors. It is also a very applicable course for staff from disciplines working closely with exploration staff: prospect portfolio analysts, reservoir engineers, petrophysicists and geophysicists.
Course Outlines:
Specifics topics that will be discussed include the following:
- The statistical fundamentals for risk and volume assessment will be presented, with practical exercises for understanding the results of a risk & volume assessment displayed in expectation curves.
- The difference between risk and uncertainty.
- A full discussion of the essential requirements for a working petroleum system: trap, reservoir, seal and charge.
- Examples of how traps, reservoirs, seals and charge work in different basin types around the globe and in Australian basins.
- Exercises and guidelines for estimating uncertainties for prospect parameters, including practical advice for meaningful distributions for uncertainty ranges. Particular emphasis will be given to estimating hydrocarbon column lengths with their associated uncertainties in undrilled prospects.
- Prospects and plays; the value of play maps and how these should be used for assessment of prospect risks and for ranking of prospects within a play.
- Calculating volumes for groups of prospects; how to add risked prospect volumes for a statistically correct representation of the volume promise of a portfolio of prospects.
- Geophysical evidence: incorporating geophysical evidence (DHIs) consistently and realistically in a risk assessment. An understandable and geology-based workflow, consistent with Bayes theorem, will be presented
