Planning the development of the Agbami field offshore Nigeria, as with other deepwater projects, required that critical business decisions be made in the absence of extensive subsurface data. Along with other fundamental project components that have a range of possible outcomes-for example, finalized commercial terms, wells and facilities costs, and execution schedule duration-the project team had to effectively understand, communicate, and incorporate all the key subsurface uncertainties in the process of achieving certain field development decisions.ChevronTexaco uses its gated five-phase ChevronTexaco Project Development and Execution Process (CPDEP) to mature and execute all major projects. In "CPDEP-speak," Phase Two involves the generation and selection of alternatives. Phase Three is where a "Preferred Alternative" is refined in preparation for project execution in Phase Four. Additional explanation of CPDEP follows in a separate section.Prior to moving the project into Phase Three, two critical field development options required resolution: 1) facility processing and injection capacities (oil, gas, water); and 2) a dry tree unit (DTU) versus all-subsea development decision. It was required that these development plan options be evaluated over the range of possible subsurface and cost regime outcomes in order to select the optimum development scheme.Probabilistic estimates for reserves, well count, facility costs, well costs, and schedule were developed. Uncertainties such as a potential reserve differences between dry and wet tree development and management of multiple contracts were included in the options analysis. Other operators' decisions for similar deepwater developments were benchmarked for best practices and lessons learned.Various project variables were ranked in terms of project impact in order to determine which ones drove each decision and therefore which ones needed to be most fully evaluated in terms of understanding the range of possible outcomes.

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