Oil & Gas Reserves "Mapping"

SPE has been a leader in developing petroleum reserves and resources definitions that have become the industry standard for evaluating petroleum reserves, providing a sound basis for improving the consistency in reserves and resource estimation and reporting worldwide. Now SPE is taking another step forward, envisioning a universal standard that could be adopted by international financial, regulatory, and reporting bodies, as well as the oil and gas industry. Forming the foundation for this standard are the petroleum reserves definitions approved in 1997 by SPE and the World Petroleum Council (WPC) and the resources definitions approved by SPE, WPC, and AAPG in 2000.

As a first step, the Oil & Gas Reserves Committee compared or “mapped” the classifications and definitions that are used in other worldwide systems for regulatory government reporting or company internal resource asset management. Definitions were reviewed from the following organizations :

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
U.K. Statement of Recommended Practices
Canadian Security Administrators
Russian Ministry of Natural Resources
China Petroleum Reserves Office
Norwegian Petroleum Directorate
U.S. Geological Survey
United Nations Framework Classification.

Understanding the relationships between these different sets of definitions/classifications, will make it possible to identify and leverage best practices that could potentially be incorporated into a new set of definitions.  

Oil & Gas Reserves "Mapping" Document  [589 K]
Appendix A to "Mapping" Document  [1.4 MB]