Petropedia
Plain-language articles on the engineering, financial, and operational concepts upstream teams have to defend in front of audit committees, lenders, and acquisition buyers. Written for working professionals — not introductory copy, not implementation manuals.
Finance & lending
How RBL banks set the number, weight reserve categories, apply price decks, and how borrowers negotiate redeterminations.
A&D diligence
What the report contains, where buyers stress-test the seller’s case, and the red flags experienced acquirers watch for.
Regulatory & disclosure
Rule 4-10, the 2008 modernization, 12-month average pricing, the five-year PUD rule, and how it lands in 10-K disclosures.
Reserves classification
Category definitions, recovery norms, why lenders advance differently against each, and how this maps to SPE PRMS 2P/3P.
Public equity
A walkthrough of the standard reserves section: quantities, standardized measure, rollforward, pricing sensitivity, and red flags.
ESG & methane
40 CFR Part 98 Subpart W, the 2024 rule changes, the Waste Emissions Charge, and what shows up in 10-K MD&A.
Governance & audit
Eight to twelve questions independent directors should ask each cycle, with public anchors from SPEE, PCAOB, and CAQ.
A&D diligence
State frameworks for inactive vs orphaned wells, the bonding-vs-cost gap, and how this shows up in transaction agreements.
Reserves classification
Qualitative warning signs in a third-party reserve report — PUD execution, LOE drift, evaluator tenure, behind-pipe risk, governance gaps.
Finance & lending
Collateral quality, PDP concentration, operator quality, title coverage, hedge policy, covenant headroom — what makes a bank-quality reserve case.
A&D diligence
How buyers pressure-test lease operating expense assumptions, where LOE hides in 10-Ks, fixed-vs-variable splits, water-handling costs, and red flags.
Public equity
What foreign private issuers disclose, how 20-Fs differ from 10-Ks, IFRS-vs-US-GAAP reserves reconciliation, and jurisdictional add-ons.
Industry & roles
An at-a-glance map of reservoir, drilling, production, completions, facilities, petrophysics, geology — who does what, who they argue with, what they ship.
Industry history
Horizontal drilling plus hydraulic fracturing, the 2005-2015 production surge, the 2014 OPEC response, and post-2020 capital discipline.
ESG & methane
How methane became a discrete diligence stream, Subpart W readiness in the data room, IRA Waste Emissions Charge exposure, and what buyers ask at signing.
Reading reports
Why economic life ends before technical life, the role of LOE in cutoff, and how this drives year-over-year reserve volume changes.
Reserves classification
The global SPE Petroleum Resources Management System — reserves vs resources, 1P/2P/3P, project maturity sub-classifications, and where PRMS aligns or diverges from SEC rules.
Finance & lending
Why RBL banks require hedge minimums, how hedge value flows into the borrowing base, counterparty risk, and what happens to hedges in default.
A&D diligence
NYMEX strip vs bank deck vs SEC pricing vs analyst consensus, why buyer-seller-lender decks diverge, and how price uncertainty enters the bid-ask spread.
Regulatory & disclosure
FASB ASC 932 standardized measure, why it includes income tax, the year-over-year rollforward, and common misreadings (not market value, not a valuation).
Reading reports
Working interest, NRI, royalty — what they mean, why NRI varies across well/lease/zone, and why title uncertainty matters to valuation.
Governance & audit
Q3 data collection through Q1 finalization, who’s involved, key control points, common findings, and what a deficient review looks like.
Industry history
From 1960 founding through the 1973 embargo, 2014 OPEC+ formation, 2020 COVID supply cut, and post-2022 capacity constraints.
Service contracts
Risk allocation under each contract structure, the historical pendulum, post-2020 day-rate inflation, and implications for capex assumptions.
A plain-language overview of the engineering disciplines that make up upstream oil and gas.
Reservoir engineering is concerned with what is below ground: how oil, gas, and water are trapped in rock, how they move toward a wellbore as pressure drops, and how much of the in-place hydrocarbon a development plan can recover. The work informs reserves disclosure, infill spacing, recovery method selection, and long-term forecasts.
Drilling engineering is concerned with getting a wellbore to the reservoir safely, efficiently, and at a cost the development case can defend. The discipline spans well design, mud and casing programs, directional plans, hydraulics and pressure control, and the integrity standards a regulator and an audit committee will both ask about.
Production engineering is concerned with making and keeping wells productive after drilling: matching surface facilities and lift methods to the reservoir, managing well performance over time, and reconciling field measurements with allocation and accounting. It is the daily discipline that connects subsurface intent to recorded production.
Completions engineering covers the design choices that turn a drilled hole into a producing well: perforation strategy, hydraulic fracturing, acid stimulation, sand control, and downhole equipment selection. The discipline mediates between drilling assumptions and the production performance the asset team has to defend.
Artificial lift covers the methods used to keep oil and gas flowing once natural reservoir pressure can no longer push fluids to surface on its own. Well integrity covers the barrier philosophy and inspection cadence that keeps a producing well safe over its operating life. Both are operational, both are auditable, both shape long-term opex.
Facilities engineering covers the surface plant that separates, treats, measures, and moves produced fluids and gas. Gas processing extends that to dehydration, sweetening, and conditioning before sale. The discipline determines what can be recorded, what can be sold, and what the safety and emissions footprint of a field actually looks like.
Petroleum economics converts forecasts, costs, ownership terms, and commodity assumptions into the financial views that lenders, auditors, partners, and acquisition buyers compare. Reserves work formalizes how proved, probable, and possible volumes are classified for disclosure under SEC, PRMS, and other frameworks.
Petrophysics interprets wireline and logging-while-drilling measurements to estimate porosity, water saturation, lithology, and net pay. The discipline links what is measured downhole to what reservoir engineers, drilling teams, and reserves auditors carry into their own work.
Well testing uses planned pressure and rate measurements to learn about reservoir properties and the well’s connection to the reservoir. Modern rate-transient methods extend this to long-running production data, supporting flow-regime identification, permeability estimation, and skin diagnosis without large shut-ins.
Flow assurance manages the physics that can stop a well or pipeline from flowing reliably: hydrate formation, wax and paraffin deposition, asphaltene instability, erosion risk, scale, and corrosion. The discipline is most visible in deepwater and long-tieback systems but applies everywhere fluids move through restricted geometry.