Comparative study of aggregations under different dependency assumptions for assessment of undiscovered recoverable oil resources in the world

Abstract

The U.S. Geological Survey assessed all significant sedimentary basins in the world for undiscovered conventionally recoverable crude-oil resources. Probabilistic methodology was applied to each basin assessment to produce estimates in the form of probability distributions. Basin probability distributions were computer aggregated to produce resource estimates for the entire world. Aggregation was approximated by a three-parameter lognormal distribution by combining the first three central moments of basin distributions. For purposes of experiment and study, world aggregation was conducted under four different sets of assumptions. The four cases are (1) dependent assessments of all basins, (2) dependent assessments within continental areas, but independent assessments among continental areas, (3) dependent assessments within countries, but independent assessments among countries, and (4) independent assessments of all basins. Mean estimate remained the same in all four cases, but the width of interval estimate formed using the 95th and 5th fractiles decreased with reduced dependency in going from first to fourth case.