CALGARY, ALBERTA--(Marketwired - Nov. 12, 2013) - Petroleum engineers from Calgary-based Energy Navigator Inc. have recently been invited to present their innovative method for more accurately forecasting unconventional oil and gas reserves at two high-ranking North American universities. Boyd Russell, P.Eng, SPE, presented a guest lecture on "Exploration and Development of Unconventional Oil and Gas Resources" to students in the University of Western Ontario's Department of Earth Sciences on October 10, 2013. Randy Freeborn, P.Eng, SPE, will guest lecture at the University of Houston Cullen College of Engineering November 19-21, 2013, presenting Energy Navigator's research findings on a variety of unconventional resource forecasting topics including: creation of type wells; working with contemporary and modified Arps decline equations; and Analog Forecasting.
"We are both honoured and excited to share our research and forecasting methods with the next generation of oil and gas professionals," said Energy Navigator President Boyd Russell. "Energy Navigator has partnered with Western for several years, providing their students with our Value Navigator integrated evaluation software. We know that Western grads are influential across our industry, so this is a wonderful opportunity to contribute to the future of oil and gas. It's also a clear sign that our methods are becoming accepted practice in evaluating unconventional reserves."
For Freeborn, being asked to lecture by the University of Houston's Dr. W. John Lee is a particular honour. "Dr. Lee is certainly one of the most influential academics in the field of petroleum engineering today," Freeborn remarked. "He has authored three textbooks published by SPE. He's a member of the National Academy of Engineering. He's received numerous industry awards. He's also well known for his work on oil and gas reserve regulations, as well as estimation and production forecasting of unconventional gas reservoirs. To have him recognize our work and ask us to present our methods to his students is validation that we've achieved something great."
Several years ago, as drilling and extraction technology began to enable large-scale exploration and development in unconventional plays, Russell and Freeborn recognized that traditional forecasting and type well analysis methods were not appropriate under unconventional reservoir conditions and would consistently yield forecasting errors greater than 50 per cent. Concerned that upstream oil and gas companies were launching multi-billion-dollar drilling programs based on faulty information, the two Energy Navigator engineers set out to find a better way to build accurate forecasts.
After thousands of hours of research, they developed a new methodology that has been described in technical papers and widely presented to industry groups throughout 2013. The validity of the new method was verified using blind back-casting studies on dozens of fields with known results in both Canada and the United States. Results of the back-casting studies matched actual known field results almost perfectly, indicating the new methods will yield a very high degree of accuracy in an industry that is currently plagued with unrealistic production forecasts. This accuracy, paired with the auto forecasting capabilities within Value Navigator, enables upstream oil and gas companies to evaluate hundreds of wells - even entire plays - with pinpoint accuracy in just a matter of minutes. The result is a faster, more accurate decision-making process so that drilling programs can yield predictable ROI.
Energy Navigator has published more on Russell and Freeborn's findings at www.energynavigator.com/unconventional. Their research and forecasting methodology is published in a technical paper (SPE 158867) available through the Society of Petroleum Engineers website at www.spe.org.
For more on Dr. W. John Lee and the University of Houston Petroleum Engineering Program visit http://petro.egr.uh.edu/faculty/lee. For more on the University of Western Ontario and Western's Department of Earth Sciences visit: http://www.uwo.ca/earth/index.html.
At its core, Energy Navigator is an engineering company that just happens to produce industry-leading capital and reserve asset management software for the oil and gas industry. The company operates on the principle of continually developing a better way to help upstream oil and gas companies get from data to decision. Energy Navigator's products include Value Navigator ® (Val Nav) an industry leading forecasting, economics and reserves management tool, and AFE Navigator ® (AFE Nav), an automated AFE.
About this company Energy Navigator Inc.