About This Item
- Full text of this item is not available.
- Abstract PDFAbstract PDF(no subscription required)
Share This Item
The AAPG/Datapages Combined Publications Database
Houston Geological Society Bulletin
Abstract
Abstract: The Degree of Advancement of a National
Petroleum Inventory
By
Does the United States contain vast amounts of
undiscovered oil and gas or not? The Nation needs an answer
to that question. Hubbert has shown that, in a certain volume
of densely drilled sedimentary rock, the quantity of petroleum
discovered per search effort has declined exponentially. Thus
the prospect for discovering large fields by conventional
targeting on structures within that volume of rock is
predictably small. However, the analysis does not apply even
to giant fields in the frontier regions of the OCS, Alaska, and
the overthrust belts. There, if anywhere, geological analogy
suggests great promise.
The analysis also does not apply to gas fields underneath
the volume of rock analyzed by Hubbert. Moreover, the number
of small fields found within the densely drilled volume is
actually increasing per search effort. Thus there is no
numerical basis for determining the ultimate yield from small
oil fields anywhere in the United States. It is possible that we do not even know how much
petroleum lies in giant traps between structures if most drilling has been confined to structures.
One outlandish
explanation for the fact that industry has done no better than a
computer drilling randomly is that there is no advantage in
knowing where the structures are. All this ignorance highlights the necessity for a
rapid inventory of the Nation's petroleum resources. Various
proposals for making an effective inventory are briefly
presented without advocacy. End_of_Record - Last_Page 3---------------