Abstract
For a given hydrocarbon exploration opportunity, the influences of value, cost, success probability and corporate risk tolerance provide an optimal working interest that should be taken in the opportunity in order to maximize the risk adjusted value. When several opportunities are available, but when the total budget is insufficient to take optimal working interest in each, an analytic procedure is given for optimizing the risk adjusted value of the total portfolio; the relevant working interests are also derived based on a cost exposure constraint. Several numerical illustrations are provided to exhibit the use of the method under different budget conditions, and with different numbers of available opportunities.
When value, cost, success probability, and risk tolerance are uncertain for each and every opportunity, the procedure is generalized to allow determination of probable optimal risk adjusted value for the total portfolio and, at the same time, the range of probable working interest that should be taken in each opportunity is also provided. The result is that the computations of portfolio balancing can be done quickly in either deterministic or probabilistic manners on a small calculator, thereby providing rapid assessments of opportunities and their worth to a corporation.
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