Publications

Most oil companies are faced with the problem of how to best allocate their resources to optimize their portfolio of potential growth assets. Caltex's approach in Indonesia was to characterize their assets (over 3000) on scales of recovery technology type, economic viability, and risk level. Consistency of application of the process and well defined guidelines were the keys to quality rankings of our projects. Once the assets were characterized, Caltex could focus efforts to develop technology types on those assets that would impact the most assets and apply scarce resources on those projects that would provide the highest return at the risk levels deemed acceptable.The technology classifications were primary recovery projects and secondary and enhanced oil recovery (EOR) projects These categories included the assets of currently producing projects and those for which firm plans of development had been formulated, and assets within existing fields that have not yet been evaluated (future development targets) Assumptions were made for the unevaluated reservoirs (prim ary and EOR) to provide the technology type dependent recovery efficiencies and economic costs.Once these technology type assets were defined, a recovery volume was estimated and these assets included in CPl's resource allocation. This volume was then assigned a rank in terms of economic viability and risk level. From the technology, economic, and risk rankings, a composite risked value was calculated for groupings of assets by area or field From this composite value, each area or field project could be ranked and detailed evaluations performed on the more promising assets. Long range strategic planning could be based on the equitable allocation of resources.