A Prediction on the Performance and Economic Viability of Future Gas Wells in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract The Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin (WCSB) is dominantly a gas-bearing basin, particularly in the western and northern regions. With the major fluctuations in gas prices over the past year, it has become increasingly difficult to determine the economic viability of exploring for and developing natural gas reserves within the basin. Each geographic area within the WCSB has its own economic criteria from the relatively inexpensive low reserve, low deliverability shallow gas of southeastern Alberta to the high reserve, high deliverability of Western Alberta and Northeastern British Columbia. To compare which plays are economically more attractive, a detailed analysis must be done to statistically compare the risk factors, the ultimate reserves and deliverability for each gas-bearing horizon. In addition, a full cycle economic model must be constructed in order to determine the future economic viability of each play. To predict how future wells will perform, the statistical database must be based on the most recent drilling; however, success, reserves, and deliverability trends through time must also be investigated. The current model subdivides the WCSB into 16 geographic areas and related gas-bearing horizons. Statistical success rates, ultimate reserves, and deliverabilities for current gas wells have been determined for each gas-bearing interval through time. Data from the last five years is then utilized to predict the risked and unrisked reserve and deliverability distribution for future wells within each geographic area. An economic model using land, seismic, capital, and operating costs compares gas plays, prospects, and acquisition opportunities across the WCSB. During the period January 1999 to December 2004, 44,224 gas wells (that can be declined) have been put on production. These wells have found in excess of 17.2 TCF of gas reserves with an average reserve per well of 0.39 BCF. The geographic area where the most gas wells were drilled and put on production was in Southern Alberta with 20,344 wells. Southern Alberta also showed the lowest average reserves per well, of wells that can be currently declined, of 0.11 BCF while the BC Foothills showed the highest reserves per well of 7.8 BCF. Introduction The full cycle economic viability for all productive natural gas formations ("gas plays") in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin ("WCSB") can be determined using publicly available geological, land, and production data. This paper represents a summary of the processes utilized in a series of larger regional studies performed by the consulting firm AJM Petroleum Consultants (AJM) from 2001 to the present. The regional studies utilized various parameters for the gas plays resulting from an unbiased statistical analysis of all wells drilled during the most recent five-year period within the WCSB. Results were reported for both risked (Exploration and Development) and unrisked (Development) cases. The area investigated in the regional studies includes all productive natural gas formations in Western Saskatchewan, Alberta, and Northeastern British Columbia. The basin was subdivided into 16 geographic areas (Figure 1).
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".