Probable Reserves
Categories: Econ
Will you be home in time for dinner? Probably. Will you sleep in late? Probably. When there’s ground that’s tagged as an oil field, does that mean we’ll get all the oil from it? Probably. But not necessarily.
Probable reserves are oil reserves that can probably be removed by drilling...but they don’t know for sure. "Probable" in the oil biz means 50% - 89%. Who knew “probable” could be so precise? 90% and up are “proved reserves,” and lower than 50% are “possible reserves.”
Extracting oil is a messy task...not just because it’s oil, but because each oilfield is its own unique snowflake. Some oil is easy to pump out...a piece of oily cake. Others are difficult to get out of the ground. If it looks like it might be a tough one, those oil reserves in the ground are called probable reserves. Things like the land itself, regulations, and technology all factor into how easy it is to get oil reserves out of the ground.
