AAPG International Conference & Exhibition
October 24-27, 2004 • Cancun Convention Center • Cancun, Mexico

All courses will be held at the Camino Real Cancun Hotel
and include course notes and refreshments.

POST-CONFERENCE
Course #6 (AMGP)
Play Assessment Techniques

Who Should Attend

Exploration geoscientists and managers interested in conducting or understanding estimates of undiscovered hydrocarbon potential for plays or basins.

Course Content

This course covers the ExxonMobil play assessment methodology. The primary focus is on estimating the remaining undiscovered hydrocarbon potential of one or more plays. Consideration is given to estimating the number, size, hydrocarbon type, and likely locations of future discoveries.

Topics covered within the workshop include tailoring the approach to the available data, ensuring consistency among input parameters to obtain more rigorous results, and understanding the difference between risk and uncertainty.

Also included are discussions on how to use Geographic Information Systems (GIS) both to manage assessment input data and output results and to optimize the assessment process. GIS provides an effective means of identifying the most favorable remaining areas ("sweet spots") within a play or basin and of making assessments of undiscovered potential available for a variety of business analyses.

Course agenda:

• Introduction
• Geologic Analysis and Play Delineation
• Play Element Adequacy
• Play Chance
• Future Success Ratio
• Play Element Maps
• Number of Future Fields
• Trap Density Method
• Field Density Method
• Known Prospect Counts
• Sizes of Future Fields
• Historic Field Data
• Assessed Prospect Size Data
• Closure Sizes and Reservoir Models
• Prospect Aggregation
• Geologic Analogs
• Hydrocarbon Commodities and Chance of Oil Small Fields
• Play and Subplay Dependencies
• Attainability (Economic Filtering)
• Uncertainty: Range of Possible Outcomes
• Optimizing Play Assessment Using GIS
• Beyond Play Assessment to Opportunity Analysis
• Wrap Up