Oil and gas companies concerned with resource base enlargement are primarily focused on prospective resources calculated based on the geological forecast. The simplest and crudest is the deterministic evaluation method for assessing such resources, reasoning from a classical logic applied for all volumetric estimates. Such an approach, however, in the context of low geological exploration maturity, where single-number scenarios are considered, will produce result with low information value. Whereas the probabilistic method based on many representative scenarios with different quantitative variables (parameters used for calculations) considered for a target object is more revealing and currently widely applicable. However, this approach is not fully reliable, since it largely overlooks statistical dependencies between the variables. The proposed here methodology operates with available characteristics of known oil accumulations, thus enabling recognition of dependencies and correlation between parameters and thereby allowing obtaining the best representation of the prospective resources in new areas.

Keywords: raw hydrocarbons, resource assessment, resource potential, probability theory, mathematical statistics, mathematical modeling.

DOI 10.20403/2078-0575-2025-3-88-95

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