Throughout 1960’s, the concepts of risk analy-sis methods were more restricted to academia and
were quite new to the petroleum industry when
contributions appeared from Grayson (1960), Arps
and Arps (1974), Newendorp (1975, edited as Ne-wendorp and Schuyler, 2000) and Megill (1977).
Newendorp (op.cit.) emphasized that decision
analysis does not eliminate or reduce risk and will
not replace professional judgment of geoscientists,
engineers, and managers. Thus, one objective of
decision analysis methods, as will be discussed later
in this paper, is to provide a strategy to minimize
the exposure of petroleum projects to risk and un-certainty in petroleum exploration ventures.