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40 comments on Empirical Relationships Between Reserves and Production Rates

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marcosdumay on November 9, 2007 - 4:21pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

"They also say this is light oil - at 28 API this is not light but intermediate crude. It is lighter I believe than the other oil they produce."

That is what I get from their press releases too. Brazilian oil is heavy to the point that we mostly don't refine it, we sell and buy light oil. That field seem to have the lightest oil of Brazil.

Also:

"...this is a very optimistic time line..."

Brazilian governemnt is always optimist when talking about energy.

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alanisthename on November 10, 2007 - 4:51am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Very interesting post, Khebab, that opens a can of worms.

I suspect that Brazil's 'recoverable' reserves are closer to OIIP than to proved. This appears to be the trend nowadays. OIIP is a constant, being fairly easy to measure. The percentage recovered over time is a variable so URR must be a variable. A bit of equation abuse gives:

V(URR) = K(OIIP) * V(R%)

New discoveries and the expected flow rates are being inflated by publishing OIIP instead of proved. They are the asymptote to which URR will approach but never reach.

The other equation is what Saudi Arabia uses when they talk about their reserves. I call this the lawyers' definition:

Reserves = OIIP - Produced

New oil discoveries are being overstated on the old basis and there won't be any reserve growth. Things are even worse than they look.

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40 comments on Empirical Relationships Between Reserves and Production Rates

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