Month: July 2009

Positive and negative revisions, extensions, new reservoir discoveries in old fields, and new field discoveries that occurred during the report year

Spain’s largest oil company. The firm also owns YPF, Argentina’s #1 oil company, and has operations in more than 30 countries

Remaining amount of gas to be sold as per the contract after offset of quantities sold to date. For instance in Yam Tethys’ contract with IEC they are contracted to always maintain 130% of the remaining TCQ due to IEC

If the drilling company has lost control of a well and it has blown out (uncontrolled release of pressure subsurface fluids) a relief well can be drilled from a nearby location to intersect the pressured reservoir horizon close to the original borehole and to allow the pumping of high density mud to kill the original blow-out.

Relief well is to counter the problem of the flow of oil or gas from a ruptured well which needs to be filled from the bottom. The relief well is drilled at an angle to intersect the damaged well just above the oil reservoir and is supposed to intercept the failed well where it ends, such as in the case of the BP well in the Gulf of Mexico at about 18,000 feet underground. Once the wells intersect, BP will inject massive amounts of heavy mud — much heavier than the oil — from the new well into the leaking well. The same pressure that is currently pushing out the oil will also force the mud up the well hole. Once there’s enough mud in the failed hole, the leak should stop.

Recoverable resources are the subset of the total resource base that is thought to be technically recoverable; the technology exists to make its extraction possible. This subset is further divided into discovered and undiscovered resources. Discovered recoverable resources are those in a known location. That is, those reservoirs that geologists have actually located through exploration. Discovered recoverable resources include current production, all past production, as well as the gas that is remaining to be produced (known as ‘reserves’). Economically recoverable resources are those natural gas resources for which there are economic incentives for production; that is, the cost of extracting those resources is low enough to allow natural gas companies to generate an adequate financial return given current market conditions. However, it is important to note that economically unrecoverable resources may, at some time in the future, become recoverable, as soon as the technology to produce them becomes less expensive, or the characteristics of the natural gas market are such that companies can ensure a fair return on their investment by extracting this gas. Those resources that have been discovered, and for which a specific reservoir location is known, can further be broken down into those resources that are economically recoverable, and those that are economically unrecoverable. This differs from technically unrecoverable resources, in that the technology exists (or is foreseeable in the near future) to get economically unrecoverable resources from the ground, but the economics do not exist to make the production of this natural gas profitable. Those discovered, technically and economically recoverable resources are further broken down into different types of ‘reserves’. In general, reserves can be broken down into two main categories – proved reserves, and other reserves