The Devonian Beaverhill Lake reefs in the subsurface of central Alberta are among the most prolific oil-producing reservoirs in Canada. More than 1,600 exploratory wells have penetrated into the Beaverhill Lake beds in the area. Nineteen oil pools have been discovered, and make up a reserve of 848 × 10⁶ m³ (5.3 × 10⁹ bbl) of oil in place. Subsurface studies reveal that episodic growth of reef occurred on the Swan Hills platform. The questions for petroleum resource evaluation are: (1) how many undiscovered pools may exist, and (2) what are their possible sizes?

This talk will use the Beaverhill Lake data to discuss the following questions. (1) What is the role of play definition in resource evaluation? (2) What types of geological data or information are required to construct a pool-size distribution scheme? (3) What geological information can and cannot be inferred from pool-size distribution data? (4) What types of procedures are available for determining the number of pools? (5) How can pool sizes by rank be estimated? (6) What types of uncertainty can be handled and reduced by the present method? Finally, the number of possible undiscovered pools and their sizes in the Beaverhill Lake Group also will be addressed.

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