National Assessment of Undiscovered Oil and Gas Resources of the United States Outer Continental Shelf

Abstract

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is a U.S. Department of Interior agency that manages oil and natural gas resources on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf (OCS). Every five years, BOEM prepares an assessment of undiscovered oil and gas resources for the OCS. This presentation summarizes the most recent BOEM effort, a 2016 assessment of the technically and economically recoverable oil and gas resources for the OCS. The assessment also includes a recent (2018) update to geologic plays in the Beaufort Sea, offshore Alaska. The assessment incorporates advances in petroleum exploration and development technologies and includes new global analogue fields. Estimates of undiscovered technically recoverable resources (UTRR) and undiscovered economically recoverable resources (UERR) are used to support development of the national leasing program on the U.S. OCS. Commodities assessed include crude oil, natural gas liquids, and natural gas that exist in conventional reservoirs and are producible with conventional recovery techniques. A comprehensive geologic play-based approach is used and involves developing play models, delineating the geographic limits of each play, and compiling data on critical geologic and reservoir engineering parameters. Resource estimates are presented stochastically as a range of UTRR and UERR. The UERR results are presented as price-supply curves that highlight the relationship of price to economically recoverable resource. In total, BOEM assesses a mean UTRR of 148.83 billion barrels of oil equivalent (BBOE) for the entire U.S. OCS, including 73.69 BBOE in the Gulf of Mexico OCS, 50.7 in the Alaska OCS, 13.07 in the Pacific OCS, and 11.39 in the Atlantic OCS. Economically recoverable resources vary based on an array of price assumptions. The BOEM 2016 assessment includes several changes from the previous BOEM assessment published in 2011. In the 2016 assessment, we recognize a decreased UTRR in Gulf of Mexico shallow water gas-prone geologic plays; changes in Atlantic OCS resources due to new information from analogue fields; and decreases in Arctic UERR based on new economic assumptions.

AAPG Datapages/Search and Discovery Article #90332 © 2018 AAPG International Conference and Exhibition, Cape Town, South Africa, November 4-11, 2018