Offshore oil estimates

Was just discussing this in a GD thread and thought I’d ask here. How were the oil estimates by DOE for offshore reserves made? Some of those areas, afaik, haven’t been explored either at all or in a very limited fashion. How accurate are they? Does the oil industry experts generally agree with those estimates, think they are low or high?

I was doing some google searching but it was hard to find any cites that go into the details of how the estimates were made and on what basis they are disputed. I don’t want to get into the debate aspects of whether or not we should exploit these resources (that’s being discussed in the GD thread), just in how those estimates were made, what they were based on, and perhaps how accurate they may or may not be.

-XT

I am interested in this as well. I understand reserve estimates as prepared in accordance with standards of the Society of Petroleum Engineers, which these estimates would not be.

Doesn’t seem anyone has any answers for this one. :frowning: I’ve been doing a bit of research on it using google but not getting to many solid answers.

-XT

I emailed the following questions to Phyllis Martin, the contact listed at the end of the report I cited

She replied within 1 hour (!):

Those references are pretty deep, and will probably require some study to tease out the information you seek, but it is a start.

For all their shortcomings, no one can say the DOE isn’t prompt!

Wow! That’s pretty cool. I would have never thought to ask them for the info! I’ll see if I can dig into it this afternoon, work permitting.

Thanks Fear!

-XT