A Framework for Scienti c Discovery in

It is common knowledge in the oil industry that the typical cost of drilling a new ooshore well is in the range of $30-40 million, but the chance of that site being an economic success is 1 in 10. Recent advances in drilling technology and data collection methods have led to oil companies and their ancillary companies collecting large amounts of geophysical/geological data from production wells and exploration sites. This information is being organized into large company databases and the question is can this vast amount of history from previously explored elds be systematically utilized to evaluate new plays and prospects? A possible solution is to develop the capability for retrieving analog wells and elds for the new prospects and employing Monte Carlo methods with risk analysis techniques for computing the distributions of possible hydrocarbon volumes for these prospects. This may form the basis for more accurate and objective prospect evaluation and ranking schemes. However, with the development of more sophisticated methods for computer-based scientiic discoveryy6], the primary question becomes, can we derive more precise analytic relations between observed phenomena and parameters that directly contribute to computation of the amount of oil and gas reserves. For oil prospects, geologists compute potential recoverable reserves using the pore-volume equation1] Recoverable Reserves in STB = BRV N G Shc RF 6:29 FV F ; where BRV = Bulk Rock Volume in m 3 N/G = Net/Gross ratio of the reservoir rock body making up the BRV = average reservoir porosity(pore volume) Shc = average hydrocarbon saturation RF = Recovery Factor(the fraction of the in-place petroleum expected to be recovered to surface) 6.29 = factor converting m 3 to barrels FVF = Formation Volume Factor of oil(the amount that the oil volume shrinks on moving from reservoir to surface) STB = Stock Tank Barrels, i.e. barrels at standard conditions of 60 0 F and 14.7 psia. In qualitative terms, good recoverable reserves have high hydrocarbon saturation, are trapped by highly porous sediments(reservoir porosity), and surrounded by hard bulk rocks that prevent the hydrocarbon from leaking away. Having a large volume of porous sediments is crucial to nd-ing good recoverable reserves, and therefore, a primary emphasis of this study is to determine the porosity values from collected data in new prospect regions. We focus on scientiic discovery 1