The predictive performance of United Kingdom North Sea exploration wells, 2018–2023

With the paucity of exploration performance tracking studies in the peer-reviewed literature, this paper serves as an example of ways to assess predictive accuracy and determine what lessons can be shared. From a 52-well North Sea United Kingdom Continental Shelf multiyear multioperator exploration portfolio, an overestimation of prospect resource size and slight underestimation of the number of discoveries combined to generate an overall subpar predictive performance for this mature area. Resource overestimation resulted from having the low ends of resource distributions too high, the high ends slightly too high, and possibly because of input parameter distribution selection. This study illustrates how additional investigation of both predrill versus postdrill prospect resource and geologic success rate data need to be conducted separately to best prescribe corrective actions to improve prediction accuracy. These thematic trends are readily transferable to prospect-generating teams, especially when no assurance process exists or when that process does not regularly share results beyond management updates.