Quick Search:    advanced search

GSW Home   GeoRef Home   My GSW Alerts   Contact GSW   About GSW   Journals List   Help

This Article Figures Only Full Text Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in Web of Science Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Verma, M. K. Articles by Bird, K. J. Search for Related Content GeoRef GeoRef Citation

Role of reservoir engineering in the assessment of undiscovered oil and gas resources in the National Petroleum Reserve, Alaska

¹ U.S. Geological Survey, P.O. Box 25046, MS 939, Denver Federal Center, Denver, Colorado 80225; mverma{at}usgs.gov
² U.S. Geological Survey, Menlo Park, California 94025; kbird{at}usgs.gov

Mahendra Verma specializes in reservoir engineering and has more than 26 years of worldwide oil industry experience. Currently, he is a research petroleum engineer with the U.S. Geological Survey, providing engineering support to various geological assessments of fields and provinces in the United States, Canada, North Sea, Russia, and the Middle East. He holds petroleum engineering degrees from the Indian School of Mines, India (B.S. degree), the Imperial College of Science and Technology, London (Diploma of Imperial College), and Birmingham University, United Kingdom (Ph.D.).Kenneth Bird specializes in the petroleum geology of northern Alaska, where his experience spans more than 40 years. Currently, he is the coleader of the U.S. Geological Survey Alaska Petroleum Studies Project. With interests primarily in stratigraphy and sedimentology, he has been extensively involved in petroleum resource assessments. He holds geology degrees from Oregon State University (B.S. degree) and the University of Wisconsin (M.S. degree and Ph.D.).

The geology and reservoir-engineering data were integrated in the 2002 U.S. Geological Survey assessment of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPRA). Whereas geology defined the analog pools and fields and provided the basic information on sizes and numbers of hypothesized petroleum accumulations, reservoir engineering helped develop necessary equations and correlations, which allowed the determination of reservoir parameters for better quantification of in-place petroleum volumes and recoverable reserves.

Seismic- and sequence-stratigraphic study of the NPRA resulted in identification of 24 plays. Depth ranges in these 24 plays, however, were typically greater than depth ranges of analog plays for which there were available data, necessitating the need for establishing correlations. The basic parameters required were pressure, temperature, oil and gas formation volume factors, liquid/gas ratios for the associated and nonassociated gas, and recovery factors.

Finally, the results of U.S. Geological Survey deposit simulation were used in carrying out an economic evaluation, which has been separately published.