The Forgotten Oil & Gas Study, originally created in 2014 but updated in 2018, identifies reservoirs, sands, fields and completions that appear to have unproduced hydrocarbons. The largest part and most detailed work was done on reservoirs, cleaning up the operators' names and identifying the completions within each reservoir. Once the names were matched to ensure that production from subsequent completions within a reservoir was not an issue, decline curve analysis was run on every reservoir in the Gulf of Mexico, using a statistical fit score (R²), to determine the best of the three standard models (Exponential, Cumulative, Hyperbolic). Output for all three models is downloaded as part of the output, along with other statistics of the decline curve analysis for each reservoir.

Many reservoirs were found that were not in terminal decline at the time production ceased, so decline curve analysis could not be performed. These reservoirs were identified and high-graded by daily rate of production.

Each year, the BOEM releases the amount of cumulative production and estimated remaining reserves for each field in the Gulf. Similar statistics are released for sands within each field as well. Naturally, as new reservoirs are discovered or new technology is employed, the sum of the production and reserves (the estimated ultimate recovery) can rise. However, for unknown reasons the government will occasionally revise the estimates downward, sometimes significantly. Although there may be good reasons for doing so, these fields and sands are highlighted in this study to make the search for interesting targets more efficient.

The final category of data in the study gathers completion interval which had high test rates, but didn't ultimately come online. Again, there are likely a variety of reasons for this to happen, but this study can save time identifying potential targets that are worthy of more investigation.

Overall, the Forgotten Oil & Gas Study is the perfect tool for quickly identifying targets with known hydrocarbons (lowering risk) and saving time for those who wish to work up old fields and save money doing so.

GOM³ Analytics is a collection of tools to bring high end analytics and visualization to different groups working in the Gulf of Mexico. Building on top of the rich database of GOM³, and the experience of continuously expanding the features therein, GOM³ Analytics is designed to streamline workflows at a time when everyone is trying to maximize efficiency.

This collection includes analyses for a variety of users, from forecasts of lease sale bidding, to pipeline routing using seafloor bathymetry and hazards, to visualization of well logs both online and in 3D GIS scenes.

Please contact us at 562-428-3181 or contactesa@earthsci.com for more information.