These are the errors we find most often, in models built by competent people. Each one is invisible in the output, and each one moves the answer in the same direction, which is toward approval.
Adding wells makes total rate rise. No decline curve can fit that, so the regression gives up and reports a straight exponential with a recovery estimate to match.
R² falls from 0.98 to 0.15 02A seventy percent decline is three different numbers depending on how it was defined. Type curves are quoted one way and modelled another more often than not.
15–25% on estimated 03A well spudded during a year does not produce for that whole year. Charging both to period one moves cash into exactly the period a discount rate rewards most.
14% overstatement of value 04A pit deepens and its best ore goes first. A mine modelled at one strip ratio and one grade across its life is not being conservative. It is describing a mine that does not exist.
Unit costs understated 05By the time closure is paid there is no production left to depreciate it against. Pooled into capital under units of production, the deduction is stranded entirely.
Real cash, and it lands 06A plant can be exactly the right size while something else is holding the asset back. Expansion capital gets proposed against the constraint that is easiest to measure, not the one that binds.
Capital spent where the 07Every asset team's best idea wins its own study, because none of them carry a cost or a probability. Ranked properly, the ordering usually inverts.
The free commercial fix 08We were eleven million light points nobody at anything. Split four ways, the same eleven million names the department that can act on it.
A month of argument,The Asset Health Check is the cheapest possible way to find out whether we are worth the larger engagement. Two weeks, fixed fee, and a written answer either way.