Formula from 1945 casts doubt on U.S. shale oil estimates

HOUSTON (Bloomberg) -- Jan Arps is the most influential oilman you’ve never heard of. In 1945, Arps, then a 33-year-old petroleum engineer for British-American Oil Producing Co., published a formula to predict how much crude a well will produce and when it will run dry. The Arps method has become one of the most widely used measures in the industry. Companies rely on it to predict the profitability of drilling, secure loans and report reserves to regulators. When Representative Ed Royce, a California Republican, said at a March 26 hearing in Washington that the U.S. should start exporting its oil to undermine Russian influence, his forecast of “increasing U.S. energy production” can be traced back to Arps.

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