Indexing and Normalizing Natural Gas Endowment

Abstract

Abstract A novel method is presented for indexing and normalizing natural gas endowment. The approach is demonstrated with data from Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) countries. Endowment, as defined by the USGS, refers to the sum of known volumes of hydrocarbons (cumulative production plus remaining reserves) and undiscovered volumes. The method uses a variable shape distribution model (VSD) to fit the conventional natural gas endowment published by the USGS (2000) for 29 petroleum provinces in LAC countries. The fits are good with coefficients of determination (R2) greater than 98% in all cases. The data are indexed and normalized to generate tables and crossplots of number of petroleum provinces versus normalized endowments for LAC countries. The LAC curves are compared with normalized endowments from other petroleum provinces in regions around the world, including North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, the Middle East, NorthAfrica, and the former Soviet Union. The results give the method predictive power for estimating conventional natural gas endowment in LAC petroleum provinces that at present have very small to negligible exploration activity. Of particular importance, from a practical point of view, is the fact that all the real data and VSD curves for the petroleum provinces of the various regions considered in this study display generally a concave pattern throughout, except for the curve of Latin America and the Caribbean, which displays a distinct convex pattern at the largest values of gas endowment. The complete LAC curve displays the shape of an inverted "S". The comparison suggests that there is potentially a gigantic volume of gas in the region that has not been considered in previous studies.