Principles for Managing Reserves and Resources in Albania via Petroleum Resources Management System

Abstract

Albania has an active but challenging drilling activity that demands the most innovative technology. Although new recent drilling activity, has discovered light crude oil, the predominant crude oil quality involves medium-heavy oil reservoirs mainly contained in the largest onshore European oilfield, Patos-Marinza. Even though it has high potential, Albania’s main reservoirs are practically under-developed. In the past decade, the Albanian institutions have increasingly encouraged and supported expanding drilling activity in an effort to stimulate investments in reservoir development/production and management. However, petroleum economics and appropriate management systems need to be further improved to assist in reserve ‘asset’ management. This requires, specifically, employing a collective reserves management system, Petroleum Resources Management System (PRMS), which utilizes a framework and guidelines for resource competencies to evoke necessary asset management in reserves and resources. In this paper, a basic outlook is undertaken to evaluate Albania’s resources and oil/gas reserves in a preliminary assessment to classify the reserves under the PRMS guidelines. The main idea will show how a small country with great potential, can exploit its vast resources, and ultimately capitalize on a structured systematic approach by essentially arranging a management system that is customizable and suitable as per its situation to ultimately leverage financial gains. Additionally, an analogous resources management system that is used for characterizing and identifying possible storage areas for CO2 (carbon sequestration) will also be briefly introduced that is based on the CO2 Storage Resource Management System (CO2-SRMS). Which, herein, will spotlight possible suitable areas of carbon storage in Albania. These types of management systems are crucial in decision making, offering considerably ‘better judgments’ in managing and developing resources by ranking the most suitable investment opportunities.