A mass balance approach for assessing basin-centred gas prospects: integrating reservoir engineering, geochemistry and petrophysics

Abstract

Abstract This paper presents a mass balance technique for evaluating the resource-in-place potential of basin-centred gas exploration prospects. As the name implies, the methodology is derived from the conservation of mass principle. Unlike conventional reservoir engineering techniques, the mass balance approach directly integrates dynamic elements of the total petroleum system with all static reservoir engineering, geological and petrophysical data to estimate the resource-in-place. This prospect evaluation technique not only provides an independent estimate of hydrocarbon resource-in-place for comparison with that computed from the conventional reservoir engineering approach, but also gives estimates of hydrocarbons lost from the petroleum system. Accordingly, this technique reduces the inherent uncertainty associated with conventional methods and provides more realistic estimates of resource-in-place.