Evaluation of Development Options for Alaska North Slope Viscous and Heavy Oil

Verfasser / Beitragende:
[Emil Attanasi, Philip Freeman]
Ort, Verlag, Jahr:
2015
Enthalten in:
Natural Resources Research, 24/1(2015-03-01), 85-106
Format:
Artikel (online)
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024 7 0 |a 10.1007/s11053-014-9240-1  |2 doi 
035 |a (NATIONALLICENCE)springer-10.1007/s11053-014-9240-1 
245 0 0 |a Evaluation of Development Options for Alaska North Slope Viscous and Heavy Oil  |h [Elektronische Daten]  |c [Emil Attanasi, Philip Freeman] 
520 3 |a Current estimates of discovered viscous and heavy oil in Alaska's North Slope are 12 billion barrels of oil-in-place and 12-18 billion barrels of oil-in-place, respectively (see Appendix1 for conversion to SI units). Since the early 1990s to the end of 2010, cumulative viscous oil production has amounted to 150 million barrels, and there has been no commercial production of heavy oil. During the last three decades, the industry has been challenged to develop technologies to commercially produce these untapped oil resources in this Arctic environment. In this paper, the general locations and geologic properties of the viscous oil-bearing West Sak/Schrader Bluff and heavy oil-bearing Ugnu stratigraphic intervals are described first. The geologic variability within these deposits and the evolution of technology have forced an incremental development approach, requiring costly field testing at the pilot scale of innovative extraction techniques. Although viscous oil is currently produced, its development is not mature, and firms appear to be still spending large sums on new approaches to improve recovery. The analysis specifies a representative viscous oil project and then applies a "real options” framework using simulation to determine whether the risked expected project value is sufficient to fund required expenditures on extraction process research and field testing. Computations show available field test funds to be highly sensitive to the operator's hurdle rate of return as well as the range in magnitude of potential State revenues. The contribution of the paper is solving this problem using an approach where the extreme low return and high scenarios need only be specified, and where the uncertainties are modeled with beta distributions based on historical data or expert opinion. 
540 |a 2014 International Association for Mathematical Geosciences (Outside the USA), 2014 
690 7 |a Viscous oil  |2 nationallicence 
690 7 |a Heavy oil  |2 nationallicence 
690 7 |a Alaska North Slope  |2 nationallicence 
690 7 |a Project valuation  |2 nationallicence 
700 1 |a Attanasi  |D Emil  |u US Geological Survey, National Center, Mail Stop 956, 20192, Reston, VA, USA  |4 aut 
700 1 |a Freeman  |D Philip  |u US Geological Survey, National Center, Mail Stop 956, 20192, Reston, VA, USA  |4 aut 
773 0 |t Natural Resources Research  |d Springer US; http://www.springer-ny.com  |g 24/1(2015-03-01), 85-106  |x 1520-7439  |q 24:1<85  |1 2015  |2 24  |o 11053 
856 4 0 |u https://doi.org/10.1007/s11053-014-9240-1  |q text/html  |z Onlinezugriff via DOI 
898 |a BK010053  |b XK010053  |c XK010000 
900 7 |a Metadata rights reserved  |b Springer special CC-BY-NC licence  |2 nationallicence 
908 |D 1  |a research-article  |2 jats 
949 |B NATIONALLICENCE  |F NATIONALLICENCE  |b NL-springer 
950 |B NATIONALLICENCE  |P 856  |E 40  |u https://doi.org/10.1007/s11053-014-9240-1  |q text/html  |z Onlinezugriff via DOI 
950 |B NATIONALLICENCE  |P 700  |E 1-  |a Attanasi  |D Emil  |u US Geological Survey, National Center, Mail Stop 956, 20192, Reston, VA, USA  |4 aut 
950 |B NATIONALLICENCE  |P 700  |E 1-  |a Freeman  |D Philip  |u US Geological Survey, National Center, Mail Stop 956, 20192, Reston, VA, USA  |4 aut 
950 |B NATIONALLICENCE  |P 773  |E 0-  |t Natural Resources Research  |d Springer US; http://www.springer-ny.com  |g 24/1(2015-03-01), 85-106  |x 1520-7439  |q 24:1<85  |1 2015  |2 24  |o 11053