Investing in upstream oil and gas drilling projects is a risky venture. Significant aspects of risk include the uncertainty and variability of initial production rates and declines, product prices, well costs, and shut-in times post-completion. With the advent of Big Data and more efficient computing capabilities, these inherent risks can be rigorously quantified, even without the luxury of proprietary production or geological information.

Models are validated and optimized, and the output is used to calculate confidence intervals within a portfolio of investments framework. It is with this information that companies and institutions investing in oil and gas drilling projects can target higher portfolio returns while at the same time assuming less risk.