Prospect Evaluation

Day 1

Welcome and Introduction

• Risks, Volumes and Uncertainty
• The difference between risk and uncertainty
• Prospects and Plays
• Play maps and demonstration of how understanding of the regional geology, petroleum systems and hydrocarbon plays is an essential element in the assessment of risks & volumes for individual prospects, exercises on the use of play maps for risk assessment
• Prospects and Portfolios
• Prospect maturation workflow, risk profiles and ranking of prospects, risk mitigation, scenarios in prospect assessment: when to use them and when not

Day 2

Traps and Reservoirs

• Traps
• Risks and uncertainties associated with hydrocarbon traps
• Traps in important hydrocarbon settings
• Trap types in rifts
• Reservoirs
• Risks and uncertainties associated with reservoir rocks
• Reservoirs in important hydrocarbon settings
• Reservoirs in rifts, passive margins, deltas, carbonate provinces and deep-water settings, and their typical characteristics and risks

Day 3

Seals, Pressures and Charge

• Seals and pressures
• Mechanisms of seal failure
• Seals and pressures in important hydrocarbon settings
• Seals and pressures in rifts
• Impact of source rock types and timing issues for charge assessment
• Charge in important hydrocarbon settings
• Source rocks and charge in rifts

Day 4

Risks and Volumes

• Risk assessment
• Practical exercise in small groups on prospect risk assessment
• Risk assessment continued
• Continuation of exercise
• Volume assessment
• Practical back-of-the-envelope volume calculation exercise
• Volumes an portfolios
• The impact of dependencies between prospects in a portfolio, risking and volume assessment of prospects with stacked reservoir-seal pairs, adding probabilistic prospect volumes statistically correct

Day 5

Bringing it all Together

• Exploration economics
• Basics of assessing the economic value of prospects
• Exploration economics Continued
• Geophysical evidence
• The impact on prospect POS (probability of success) of direct hydrocarbon indicators (DHIs) and/or positive (or negative) evidence form controlled source electromagnetics (CSEM) – consistent with Bayes’ theorem, exercises
• Local examples
• An opportunity to discuss examples that participants bring in the context of what was learned during the course