Predicting the Number and Size of Oil and Gas Deposits.

Two main methods of predicting the number and sizes of expected oil and gas deposits are considered: the development of probabilistic statistical models and retrospective analysis of the dynamics of the discovery of deposits in time and, on its basis, prediction of further changes of the existing trends. An analysis of the dynamics of the discovery of deposits in terms of five-year periods is presented. The deposits are divided into five classes depending on their size. The discovery of the four largest classes follows the same law, while that of the smallest-size deposits obeys a different law.