Systematic tracking of exploration results relative to pre-drill
predictions is challenging, but important. It is a means both to motivate
assessment quality and to improve the assessments produced by the exploration
team. Unbiased, accurate and consistent assessments are key for effective
exploration decisions. This paper deals with the case where a single well
targets multiple zones, compartments or reservoirs in a prospect. Most
companies handle the situation as a case of multiple distinct targets. However,
while simple, this approach ignores to what extent assessment has handled
estimation of risk dependencies and volume correlations between targets. A key
challenge for tracking assessments of multiple target prospects is tracking the
estimates of risk dependencies between the targets: single well results do not
give clear feedback on this estimate. We present an exploration program-level
statistical measure of the quality both at the level of aggregate risk
dependency estimates and at the level of the individual chance (risk) factor
dependency estimates. The procedure is demonstrated with a hypothetical, but
illustrative drilling program. Implementation of multiple target prospect
assessment performance tracking should both improve assessments of this class
of exploration ventures and stimulate more robust, accurate and transparent
estimation of prospect-scale risk dependencies.
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