An introduction to this special section: Geophysics in reserves estimation

Estimating oil and gas reserves is one of the most important functions for petroleum companies to support portfolio management and revenue forecasting. The investment com-munity uses reported reserves to assign values to companies or to individual projects, which is important to the stock markets and for financing projects. Governments use reported reserves for regulatory oversight and for forecasting national petroleum production. In 2008, one of those government agencies, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), published “Modernization of Oil and Gas Reporting.” The document was based on numerous recommendations to update reporting rules for oil and gas companies to reflect the advance in technologies.