Course Description

This course now features more advanced decision analysis techniques compared to our flagship five day course, and is designed for all Engineers, Planners, Commercial team members and Geoscientists that are charged with creating value beyond an exploration discovery or for unconventional resource assessment.

The premise for this course is that sound estimation of key engineering, geotechnical, and economic parameters is essential for maximizing profitability of oil and gas field development and operations.

Traditional deterministic methods call for the ongoing study of key parameters to get ever closer to “The Answer.” Probabilistic methods, on the other hand, recognize that most parameters have some amount of uncertainty, even through the development phase. Accordingly, this course deals with estimation under uncertainty through probabilistic estimation. We focus on identifying the key manageable parameters; thereby, helping professionals become proficient estimators and communicators of the main drivers of project value for more responsible characterization and valuation.

There are two key focus areas covered:

1) Value of Information assessments, which are central to all decisions we make in our projects. Decision tree concepts, incorporating Bayesian techniques are covered with several practical examples. The techniques are applied in a “string of pearls” exercise where a rudimentary analysis incorrectly concludes that a project is unattractive; but when viewed in light of the important conditional dependencies between outcomes, the true intrinsic value of the opportunity is revealed. The same approach can be used to model learning curves.

2) The characterization and valuation of Unconventional Resource plays. We cover basic technical differences between unconventional and conventional resources; the procedure associated with developing Type curves (production and reserves) to model uncertainty,and provide an assessment process for selecting the unconventional resource plays that best meet your company’s goals. In addition, we review the importance of assessing reserves at a project and type well level. Reserves bookings and target setting should be developed at the Project level to capture the “portfolio effect”. The section concludes with a discussion on staged development of unconventional resources, including Pilot design prior to commercial demonstration.

The course (1) uses realistic games and exercises to illustrate principles and mechanics of good estimating; (2) illustrates analytical procedures used to identify, quantify and manage the uncertainty and risk associated with modern petroleum field development and production; and (3) identifies the flaws and unintended consequences of many procedures currently used for estimating field production.

The outline below illustrates why this is the course to help increase the probability of achieving “stretch” reserve and production targets.

Course Outline

Day 1:
Introduction
Probability, Distributions and Dependency
Dealing with Uncertainty
Decision Trees - Introduction

Day 2:
Petroleum EUR Uncertainty
Chance of Project and Geological Success
Production Forecasting

Day 3:
Economic Valuation
Portfolio Principles
Value of Information -Perfect and Imperfect

Day 4:
Unconventional Resource Assessment
Performance Tracking

Course Documentation

R&A PRUDA.pdf (35.5k)