Some in
the industry defend Arps. “As far as Arps being old, the wheel was invented a
long time ago, but it still comes in handy,” says Scott Wilson, senior vice
president at Ryder Scott. Others are working to replace the Arps calculation.
Researchers are testing new formulas with names worthy of an indie band:
Stretched Exponential, which Lee helped develop; the Duong Method, devised by
Anh Duong, principal reservoir engineer for ConocoPhillips (COP); and Simple Scaling Theory, which the University of Texas’s
Patzek worked on. Rietz has made a computer model that simulates oil
production. “Come back to me in 10 years, and I’ll tell you how reliable it
was,” he says.
The bottom line: A 70-year-old formula may
overestimate the future of U.S. oil production from shale.
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