POTENTIAL OIL-FIELD DISCOVERIES FOR AZERBAIJAN

In Azerbaijan, about 300 structures that could be oil fields are known onshore, and 66 structures are already recognized in the offshore reg ion. The question is what fraction of these structures can be expected to yield horizons with commercial value. To find an answer to this pr oblem a statistical analysis has been conducted of data covering the l ast 100 years of oil production in Azerbaijan. The number of producing horizons per field was considered as a random value, described by a l inear combination of Poisson and geometric distributions. A numerical method for finding the best-fitting values of the parameters of such d istribution was developed. As a consequence, about 75% of the onshore structures, and almost 90% of the offshore structures could contain oi l-bearing horizons (but not necessarily commercially viable). To estim ate the commercial values of these horizons, as well as the probabilit y that any discovered horizon will be commercially viable, further ana lysis of the reserves, areas, thicknesses, GOR, etc., is required. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.