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arXiv · 1407.3652

Forecasting future oil production in Norway and the UK: a general improved methodology

Lucas Fievet·Zalàn Forrò·Peter Cauwels·Didier Sornette
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Abstract

We present a new Monte-Carlo methodology to forecast the crude oil production of Norway and the U.K. based on a two-step process, (i) the nonlinear extrapolation of the current/past performances of individual oil fields and (ii) a stochastic model of the frequency of future oil field discoveries. Compared with the standard methodology that tends to underestimate remaining oil reserves, our method gives a better description of future oil production, as validated by our back-tests starting in 2008. Specifically, we predict remaining reserves extractable until 2030 to be 188 +/- 10 million barrels for Norway and 98 +/- 10 million barrels for the UK, which are respectively 45% and 66% above the predictions using the standard methodology.

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Lucas Fievet, Zalàn Forrò, Peter Cauwels, Didier Sornette. 2014-07-11. Forecasting future oil production in Norway and the UK: a general improved methodology. https://arxiv.org/abs/1407.3652

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