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8
Concluding Remarks
The procedure and steps of petroleum resource assessment involve a
learning process that is characterized by an interactive loop between
geological and statistical models and their feedback mechanisms.
Geological models represent natural populations and are the basic
units for petroleum resource evaluation. Statistical models include the
superpopulation, fi nite population, and discovery process models that
may be used for estimating the distributions for pool size and number of
pools, and can be estimated from somewhat biased exploration data.
Methods for assessing petroleum resources have been developed
using different geological perspectives. Each of them can be applied
to a specifi c case. When we consider using a particular method, the
following aspects should be examined:
Types of data required
•
—Some methods can only incorporate
certain types of data; others can incorporate all data that are
available.
Assumptions required—
•
We must study what specifi c assumptions should be made and what role they play in the process of
estimation.