It used to be easy to forecast production for oil and gas wells: just draw a straight line on a production plot. But unconventional wells— those targeting unconventional shale gas and tight oil resources, which is what the world is turning to—require the manipulation of two linked equations, three variables in each. "To be able to figure out what those three variables are in your head, to figure out which data to use and which not to use, and to figure out which segments to use is extremely difficult," says Boyd Russell, a petroleum engineer with more than 35 years of experience and president of Energy Navigator Inc. Recently, Russell says, he forecasted the production of 160 randomly chosen unconventional wells in western Canada, testing the speed and accuracy of Energy Navigator's software package, Value Navigator (Val Nav). It took him 20 seconds and he was within 0.04 of one per cent of the correct answer, he says.
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