Hydrocarbon resource in place

Coal, tar, and heavy oil fuel reserves are widely distributed throughout the world. In the Western hemisphere, Canada has large tar sand, bitumen (very heavy cmde oil), and coal deposits. The United States has very large reserves of coal and shale. Coal comprises ca 85% of the U.S. recoverable fossil energy reserves (6). Venezuela has an enormous bitumen deposit and Brazil has significant oil shale (qv) reserves. Coal is also found in Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and Pern. Worldwide, the total resource base of these reserves is immense and may constitute >90% of the hydrocarbon resources in place (see... 

Finally, Rushing et al. have created a mass balance approach that directly integrates dynamic elements of the total hydrocarbon system with all static reservoir engineering, geochemical and petrophysical components. This prospect evaluation technique provides an independent estimate of hydrocarbon resource-in-place for comparison with that computed by the reservoir engineering approach. 

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