AN OFFSHORE OIL AND GAS DEVELOPMENT PLANNING MODEL INCORPORATING RISK ANALYSIS.

摘要

Offshore development planning is concerned with the selection of a method of bringing an offshore oil and gas discovery into production at an acceptable level of profit for the risk involved. The development decisions actually consist of a series of interrelated decisions, each involving numerous technically feasible alternatives. These decisions must be made very early in the planning stage when there is a great deal of uncertainty as to the quantity of recoverable oil and gas and the rate at which it can be produced. Additional uncertainty exists in the estimates of the investment requirements and timing, start of production, and operating expenses which are associated with each development alternative, and in the future oil and gas prices and inflation rates which are to be used in the economic evaluation.;An example of an offshore reservoir development in 1000 feet of water in the Gulf of Mexico illustrates the use of the model. Alternative development plans include the fixed platform, guyde tower, floating production facilities and several subsea/surface combinations.;This research describes the formulation of an Offshore Development Planning Model which can evaluate numerous alternative methods of developing an offshore discovery. A decision tree approach is employed to organize the sequence of interrelated decisions involved in the drilling, production and transport of oil and gas. Each path through the decision tree represents a particular development plan or alternative. A closed-form method of calculating the expected value and the variance of the net present worth of all cash flows which are subject to uncertainty in both timing and value is used. The method of solution makes it possible to quantify the economic risk associated with each alternative and to identify the development plan which offers the highest profit potential at the lowest economic risk.