Prospect

and Play Assessment -

PPA

Discipline: Geology
Level: Intermediate
Duration: 5 days
Instructor(s): Jeffrey (Jeff) Aldrich, Tom Temples

Assessment of plays and prospects is an important tool in managing financial and human
resources. This fully revised and updated course is a fully modern approach to defining
prospect and play volumetrics, uncertainties in defining these volumes and the risk that
the accumulation exists. This practical course is adaptable to any workplace. The course
evaluates other published approaches and contrasts them with the recommended
procedures allowing the participants to choose the very best approach to resource
evaluation. This course offers the industry quantitative, probabilistic play and prospect
assessment procedures that are consistent and repeatable allowing for direct
comparisons play to play or prospect to prospect. In addition, the methods offer measures
of the play prospectiveness based on the number and resource size distribution of
potential future fields. The course objectives are: (1) to provide knowledge and unique
tools for practical, systematic, predrill assessment of potentially recoverable oil and gas;
(2) to use the best available methods - trap volumetrics and hydrocarbon charge for
prospects, and potential numbers and sizes of prospects for plays; (3) to quantify all
geologic risks and uncertainties; and, (4) to provide insights for managers and reviewers
in evaluating assessments, avoiding pitfalls, high-grading exploration opportunities, and
planning selectively for the future. It focuses on the exploration concepts and models that
are essential to effective assessments. The concepts and techniques learned in the
course are applied to real industry examples in exercises and workshops. Tools include
comprehensive assessment forms for prospects and plays, and graphs, data tables, and
guidelines for making all assessment decisions. These tools help participants estimate
risks and success ratios, field-size distributions, field and prospect densities, trap
geometry corrections, multiple reservoir factors, porosities, permeabilities, saturations,
formation volume factors, gas/oil ratios, formation temperatures, oil and gas recovery
efficiencies, API gravities, gas gravities, NGL ratios, and oil and gas yields from source
rocks. The forms and procedures are easily adaptable for internal usage in any oil and
gas organization. All factors can be handled in either metric or English units.

"I really saw the value in standardizing a system to quantify a play/prospect. Although I
found, at times, the methods appeared quite subjective, it ultimately allowed for a detailed
comparison. Very interesting subjects. " - Exploration Geophysicist, Canada

"The instructor was quite awesome." - Development Geologist, Croatia

Designed For:
All exploration team members and leaders including geologists, geophysicists,
geochemists, analysts, reservoir engineers, economists, planners and managers who
make business decisions based upon exploration data.

You Will Learn:

How To:

Calculate geological risk and uncertainty in exploration prospects

Determine prospect resource volume estimates
Assess resource distribution in a play
Understand the differences between stochastic and probabilistic estimates
and have the knowledge to know when to one or the other.
Predict the number and size distribution of potential future fields in a play
Describe and calibrate risks associated with discovering a successful play

Course Content:
Geological controls of oil and gas occurrence: their impact on exploration risk
and success
Review of common assessment methods: selection of the most practical
approach
Application of volumetric prospect assessments: techniques, comparative
 data, and graphs to estimate input factors, such as trap volume, porosity,
net/gross saturation, hydrocarbon fill fraction, formation volume factors, and
recovery efficiencies
Probability methods: the expression of uncertainty for input factors and results
including Monte Carlo techniques
Risk analysis: Principles and practice
Hydrocarbon charge assessment: procedures for estimating possible amounts
of oil and gas generated, migrated, and trapped in prospects
Prospect assessment workshop: projects supplied either by the instructor or
by participants, worked by teams and reported to the entire group
Play assessment techniques: estimating the possible numbers, sizes, and
associated risks for potential fields, with useful data on field densities, field-
size distributions, oil versus gas relationships, and dependent versus
independent risks
Play recognition and mapping: play classification and subdivision, and play
maps that high-grade the most favorable areas with minimal geologic risks
Play assessment workshop: projects supplied either by the instructor or by
participants, worked by teams and reported to the entire group
Aggregation of assessment results: summing, derisking, and preparation for
economic analysis
Limitations, pitfalls, uses, and discovery concepts: the philosophy of judging
and using assessment results and the importance of basic geologic concepts

Instructors:

MR. JEFFREY ALDRICH is a Vice President and Senior Geoscientist with MHA Petroleum
Consultants Inc., a Denver-based petroleum consulting firm. He has over 30 years of
global oil and gas experience working from frontier exploration through appraisal and
large development projects. His expertise is in unconventional reservoirs, prospect
evaluation, reserve determinations and multi-discipline and multi-culture team dynamics.
Prior to joining MHA, he held various management and technical positions with Dart
Energy, an Australian global unconventional gas company, Greenpark Energy, a UK CBM
company, PetroSA, the South African national oil company, Forest Oil, Maxus Energy and
Pennzoil Oil and Gas Company. He has a BS in Geology from Vanderbilt University and
an MS in Geology from Texas A&M University. He is an active member in the AAPG, SPE,
RMAG, DWLS, DIPS and is a Certified Petroleum Geologist (#3791). He is author or co-
author of over 25 papers and/or technical presentations.
Dr. TOM J. TEMPLES is a consulting geologist and geophysicist with over 30 years of
experience in geology, geophysics, health and safety relating to both the petroleum and
environmental industries. He is an adjunct professor at Clemson University and was
formerly a Research Associate Professor at the University of South Carolina. He has
extensive experience in subsurface mapping, seismic stratigraphy, sequence stratigraphy,
seismic interpretation, petroleum geology, and geophysics. He is a former Vice President
and Exploration Manager of independent oil producers where he was responsible for
exploration and generation of prospects for drilling as well as the risk assessment and
budget preparation. Prior to this he was Senior Geotechnical Advisor to the Department of
Energy and served in various capacities with Texaco. He received a B.S. from Clemson
University, a MS from University of Georgia and a PhD from the University of South
Carolina.

In-House Course Presentations

All courses are available for in-house presentation to individual organizations. In-house
courses may be structured the same as the public versions or tailored to meet your
requirements. Special courses on virtually any petroleum-related subject can be arranged
specifically for in-house presentation. For further information, contact our In-House
Training Coordinator at one of the numbers listed below.
Telephone 1- 832 426 1234
Facsimile 1- 832 426 1244
E-Mail inhouse@petroskills.com

Public Course Presentations

How to contact PetroSkills:
1-800-821-5933 toll-free in North America or
Telephone 1-918-828-2500
Facsimile 1-918-828-2580
E-Mail registrations@petroskills.com
Internet www.petroskills.com
Address P.O. Box 35448, Tulsa, Oklahoma 74153-0448, U.S.A