Importance of engineering in hydrocarbon reserve estimation
The importance of being able to estimate the volumes of oil and natural gas reserves is that companies and governments can know what financial resources they have to extract oil through cutting-edge technologies by developing exploitation projects that contemplate obtaining such volumes of hydrocarbons, which will probably generate profits to be able to give continuity to future work for the development of exploration and extraction of new oil fields.
Within the engineering contributions it is important to mention that it can help a lot if we study and analyze the variation of the values of the reserve volumes along the life time of the reservoir. If we take the example of when an oil field is discovered and we achieve its extraction, then at the end of its useful life it requires certain prospecting studies of volumes that may still be economically recoverable and profitable.
On the other hand, oilfield engineering never fails to show the best techniques and procedures for the estimation of recoverable volumes of oil and natural gas from any oilfield to which the analysis of recoverable reserves is performed.
If as engineers we are able to correctly estimate the original volume of hydrocarbons in a reservoir, then we will be able to elaborate and execute a project that not only contemplates the exploitation and production of hydrocarbons, but we will also be able to evaluate the economic potential of other reservoirs with the same characteristics as the one previously studied.
In conclusion, I can say that both the calculation of the estimated reserves, whose volume is essential to estimate the future potential of the field, and the original remaining volume of oil require the necessary calculations and evaluations to be able to foresee the necessary estimates both in technologies and financial resources that are feasible when studying these two types of reserves.
References
[1] Al-Marhoun, M. A. 2001. Adjustment of Differential Liberation Data to Separator Conditions.
[2] Bashbush, J. L. 1981. A method to Determine K-Values from
Laboratory Data and its Applications.