Abstract
The influence of uncertainties in field development costs, well costs, lifting costs, selling price, discount factor, and oil field reserves are evaluated for their impact on assessing probable ranges of uncertainty on present day worth PDW, oilfield lifetime τ2/3, optimum number of wells OWI, and the minimum (n-) and maximum (n+) number of wells to produce a PDW ≥ 0. The relative importance of different factors in contributing to the uncertainties in PDW, τ2/3, OWI, n- and n+ is also analyzed.
Numerical illustrations indicate how the maximum PDW depends on the ranges of parameter values, drawn from probability distributions using Monte Carlo simulations.
In addition, the procedure illustrates the relative importance of contributions of individual factors to the total uncertainty, so that one can assess where to place effort to improve ranges of uncertainty; while the volatility of each estimate allows one to determine when such effort is needful.
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