Why Bother? The Five Reasons Why Play Based Exploration Worthwhile in a Modern, Busy, Understaffed and Overworked Exploration Company Environment

Abstract

Exploration and new business teams use play mapping because it provides “focus” via the use of a spatial tool over which opportunities can be layered to quickly rank and rate the flood of opportunities that teams typically have to filter in any active exploration area. At a functionality level the available tools diverge and many just provide qualitative or relative goodness maps. This is still useful but without numeric estimates it is always difficult to estimate the value or ranking of any opportunity and thus get corporate endorsement. The simplest play tool is a crayon on tracing paper but this is hard to update as new data becomes available and it is also easy to lose. The best play tools are consequently software packages that integrate dynamic well data into the maps in a way that helps geologists build and make the maps and provides a way of evergreening the evaluation with an audit trail and an archive mechanism that ensures that valuable corporate knowledge captured and retained. The second function more advanced tools can deliver is the integration of postulated prospects from a calibrated anolog database into the evaluation. The third function advanced play tools can do is calculate the estimated yet to find volumes and values for each evaluated play incorporating both identified and postulated/unidentified prospects. The forth function advanced tools can provide is the ability to predict pre-drill what the impact of drilling one prospect will be on the evaluation of adjacent prospects. This derisking “success volume” calculation of volumes and values associated with each target means geologists can numerically justify wells that were always intuitively sensible but were never supported by the previously simplistic non-spatial economic evaluations. The fifth function that more advanced tools can deliver is to assist companies exploring in proven play areas where the play elements are all proven. In these areas information relating to types of traps that have been drilled and which work and why some may have failed can be compared these data to the trap types of undrilled features thus providing a methodology for the systematic search for new traps. In summary the play tools that are quantitative and can deal with the dynamic changing environments of data, interpretations, prospects and trap types provide exploration and new business teams with tools for making their jobs easier and ultimately delivering superior results.

AAPG Datapages/Search and Discovery Article #90217 © 2015 International Conference & Exhibition, Melbourne, Australia, September 13-16, 2015