Optimise Exploration Decisions

 

Every exploration programme is effectively a set of rolling investment options with election points between each phase.

RSDD-H CAN OPTIMISE THIS INVESTMENT PROCESS BY:

 

  • Improving venture management investment decisions at strategic "election" points on acreage and prospect progression

 

  • Improving the design and location of exploration projects in each phase and avoiding expenditure on unnecessary programmes in areas of poor prospectivity

 

  • High grading the short list of potential drilling locations and avoiding unnecessary D&As

 

In each investment phase it is important to add and apply new knowledge about the exploration merits of the lands being explored.This means that investments should be targeted to improve exploration focus on the target lands early on and to rapidly identify appealing prospects and progressively reduce their exploration risk. It also means not spending money on projects and locations that exhibit poor prospectivity from an early stage and which are never likely to provide low risk prospect inventory.

RSDD-H surveys provide this exploration focus, PI build and risk reduction, particularly in Exploration Phases 1 and 2 when licences are being sought from area wide play development and through TEA- style, early stage G&G licence work programmes.

In subsequent exclusive Exploration Licence Block work commitment Phases (3 through 5), block-wide RSDD-H surveying ranks the lands quickly for areas of apparent lower risk prospectivity and accelerates PI development early on, enabling better design and placement of seismic programmes, with potential for significant cost savings.

Then at the pre-drill prospect ranking stage, RSDD-H can significantly alter prospect risks and improve the choice of preferred well locations to maximise the chance of drilling success. This is something that even the best of seismic attribute analysis (such as AVO) often fails to deliver.

Increase in drilling success can then result by having chosen not to drill high risk prospects as determined by RSDD-H high resolution surveying but by having drilled only the lowest risk prospects, in preferred locations, as determined by both seismic and RSDD-H.

Upon discovery success the high resolution RSDD-H mapping will also have identified areas for early step-out drilling of low risk satellite prospects, if present.

Adopting this exploration approach of combined RSDD-H and seismic can greatly improve exploration economics, with reduced exploration write-offs and markedly improve full cycle economics.