Probabilistic Assessment of Raton Basin Coal Gas Commercial Potential

By

Leslie O'Connor and John Seidle

Sproule Associates Inc, Denver, CO

The extremely heterogeneous nature of coal deposits makes the economics of gas extraction from these unconventional reservoirs very uncertain. Assessment of the commercial potential of Raton Basin coalbed methane is broken into two components.First, probabilistic Expected Ultimate Recoveries are estimated from cumulative production statistics and compared with those of other basins. Probabilities for cumulative gas production as a function of time are presented. The second componentaddresses vagaries in gas prices. Cumulative gas probabilities as a function of time are coupled with historical gas price fluctuations to calculate distributions of selected financial parameters such as NPV to illustrate the commercial risk of coal gas production from this basin.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90004©2002 AAPG Rocky Mountain Section, Laramie, Wyoming