Coutret and Associates, Inc.

Reserves Studies

Reserves studies are projects for estimating the future oil and gas recovery from a reservoir. There are several widely accepted methods for estimating reserves. Performance analysis is the extrapolation of the behavior, such as production rate or surface pressure, of wells or reservoirs to predict future production from a reservoir. Material balance is a method of accounting for everything that is put in or taken out of a reservoir while examining the pressure behavior of the reservoir. This method allows calculation of how much oil, gas, and water are in a reservoir. Analogy to similar reservoirs is a method that allows estimating reserves by examining the recovery from similar reservoirs. Volumetric analysis is a method where the amount of fluids in a reservoir is calculated by determining the size of the reservoir and the fraction of that volume that fluids occupy.

Reserves studies are used for several purposes: planning reservoir development, planning production facilities, estimating value, predicting economic feasibility of recovering the reserves, optimizing recovery methods.