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24-Pet-B3 Petroleum Geology · December 2015

Question 14 of 22

Nivaar worked solution (AI-drafted; not reviewed by a licensed engineer)

Notes on this paper

National Exams, December 2015 — 98-Pet-B3, Oil and Gas Evaluation and Economics (3 hours, closed book, approved non-programmable calculator only). The exam's own cover page is titled "Oil and Gas Evaluation and Economics" and every question is property valuation / reserves & production economics / DCF-NPV screening content — no geology anywhere.

Reference texts: Thompson & Wright, Oil Property Evaluation; Canadian Oil and Gas Evaluation Handbook (COGEH), Vol. 1 (Society of Petroleum Evaluation Engineers, Calgary Chapter); National Instrument 51-101, Standards of Disclosure for Oil and Gas Activities (Canadian Securities Administrators); SPE/WPC/AAPG/SPEE Petroleum Resources Management System (PRMS); Ahmed, Reservoir Engineering Handbook.

The exam's own instructions ask for only 7 of the 10 short-answer questions and note the Cash-Flow/Future-Value tables are graded by column; for "choose N of M" exams, every item below is answered in full as a study resource. Questions 1–10 correspond to the exam's printed Short-Answer items 1–10; Questions 11–20 correspond to the printed Multiple-Choice items 1–10; Question 21 is the Future Value table; Question 22 is the Cash Flow table.

Question 14

Question text not reproduced: the examination questions are © Engineers and Geoscientists BC. Open the official past paper (linked at the top of this page) to read the question, then follow the worked solution below.

  1. a. Only the in-situ bitumen which might be heated
  2. b. Only the bitumen in deposits over 10 m thick
  3. c. Bitumen deposits which have some recovery assigned to them ← correct
  4. d. All bitumen which is in thick zones which cannot be mined
  5. e. Amount of production which can be produced at a SOR < …

Answer: (c). “Effective” oil in place is the subset of the raw bitumen-in-place resource that has actually had a recovery process (mining, SAGD, CSS, etc.) assigned to it as technically and economically applicable — distinguishing it from the much larger total in-place resource, most of which has no assigned recovery path at all. A fixed thickness cutoff (b) or a blanket exclusion of thick non-mineable zones (d) are simplifications that do not capture the actual evaluation concept, and (a)/(e) each describe only one specific recovery process or performance metric rather than the general definition.