Valuation of Crude Oil and Gas Reserves

The valuation of crude oil and gas reserves is a critical step in pricing crude oil and gas producing firms. This is of interest both to academics and practitioners who are called upon to value these firms. It is also of interest to regulators, particularly in their oversight of mergers and acquisitions and the issue of securities to the public. Our results reject the notion that the market value of crude oil and gas per unit of reserves varies one-to-one with the current price, net of extraction costs (Hotelling model). Crude oil and gas reserve pricing is more complex in practise with both production rate and the proportion of developed proven reserves playing a role in valuation. We use fixed effects panel methods in analysis of data provided by IHS Herold Inc, which comprises 409 crude oil and gas producers (3303 firm-years) over an 18-year period from 1992 to 2008. We find no evidence to support the Hotelling model prediction of a one-to-one relation between the market value of crude oil per unit of reserves and the price of these reserves, net of extraction costs. There is evidence of time variation in this pricing relationship, with the relation being correlated with extraction rate. Further, there is evidence that the proportion of proven reserves that are developed is positively correlated with the market value of reserves. The main implication to be drawn from this study is that the valuation of crude oil and gas reserves requires more information than just reserve volume and spot price