A procedure to estimate the parent population of the size of oil and gas fields as revealed by a study of economic truncation

An estimation technique has been derived to predict the number of small fields in a geologic play or basin. Historically, many small oil and gas fields went unreported because they were not economical. This led to an underestimation of the number of undiscovered small fields. A study of the distributions of reported oil and gas fields in well-explored areas suggests that the large fields when grouped into log base 2 size classes are geometrically distributed. Further, the number of small fields reported is a function of the cost of exploration and development. Thus, the population field-size distribution is conjectured to be log geometric in form. ?? 1983 Plenum Publishing Corporation.