Editor´s Mail

The curse of names

Orinoco's Faja (new names for fields: Machete - Boyaca;
Zuata-Junin; Hamaca- Ayacucho; Cerro Negro-Carabobo)

 

From: Aníbal R Martínez
To: editor@petroleumworld.com
Sent: Monday, October 24, 2005 9:25 AM
Subject: Fw: The curse of...

Dear Elio,

The curse of names: Thank you very much for reproducing my Orinoco Belt field map in your news note of yesterday on reserves of Venezuela. It shows, properly, the six different main areas of production of the field, namely, from the west, Machete, Zuata, San Diego, Pao, Hamaca and Cerro Negro. Eighty per cent of all the hydrocarbons in the field are concentrated in them. However, what you are calling “fields”, are the four areas drawn randomly by Petróleos de Venezuela in the late seventies of last century for the evaluation of the field, a task completed in 1982 by its four operating subsidiaries Lagoven, Meneven, Maraven and Corpoven. These evaluation areas of 30 years ago were recently renamed by the Ministry with battle names of the Latin America war of independence.

The curse of nomenclature: You rightly say The Belt is a vast deposit and that it principally contains two types of hydrocarbons. One is extraheavy crude oil and the other is natural bitumen, I estimate, in a proportion of 3 to 1. One can call natural bitumen “tar-like bitumen”, but the proper nomenclature, two term mentioned above, is in use world-wide since the Study Group of the World Petroleum Council (then, World Petroleum Congress) WPC published our work of seven years in 1987. Earlier this year we produced the “SPE/WPC/AAPG Glossary” and just on 12 October we reviewed in the Society of Petroleum Engineers SPE the comprehensive revision of definitions undertook a couple of years ago, which includes careful comparison of a wide range of international systems to the current SPE guidance – the United Nations Framework Classification UNFC, of course - and identification of areas requiring further clarification. Natural bitumen is well and getting more and more recognition. You may also be interested in the recent Canadian representation of behalf of natural bitumen with the US Security and Exchange Commission.

The curse of time: You also say that “Venezuela’s” expects to certify the quantities of petroleum in the deposit, to include in “the country's proven oil reserves by 2021”. The count of petroleum-originally-in-place in the evaluation of the Orinoco Belt field in the period 1977-1982 by Petróleos de Venezuela is, I think, as good as any that could be undertaken. With such solid base, fifteen years to estimate reserves and resources has to be considered quite long. Finally, may I mention that as you know, for more than a year now we have been engaged in the process of analysing the constitution of a board of wide recognition to certify the evaluators of reserves.

Best wishes

 

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