Stories tagged with "abqaiq"

Abqaiq and Eat It Too (or, More Geological Analysis of Potential Saudi Depletion)

Posted by JoulesBurn on May 15, 2008 - 9:10am
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: abqaiq, peak oil, satellite, saudi arabia [list all tags]

Abqaiq, an aging super giant Saudi Arabian oil field, has yielded over 11 billion barrels of oil since it was discovered in November of 1940. Its past provides us with the poster child for easy oil. The first well flowed at 9720 barrels per day, a far cry from today's land finds where multiple horizontal laterals are necessary to coax lesser quantities from stingier reservoirs. But Abqaiq's more recent past paints a more muddled picture, as efforts to extract the remaining oil have produced mixed results. More advanced recovery methods have been successfully employed in some parts of the field, but these have likewise revealed unexpected geological complexities which have in turn hindered recovery in other areas. Many of the new challenges encountered in Abqaiq are relevant to the future prospects for other fields, particularly Ghawar and Khurais. This article will evaluate the development status of the field using satellite imagery to identify recent drilling in correlation with several recent technical reports on new developments and strategies for maintaining production.
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Another look at the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Posted by Heading Out on January 24, 2008 - 10:00am
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: abqaiq, ghawar, manifa, refineries, saudi arabia [list all tags]

As you may have noticed President Bush commented this past week on his (and apparently their) doubts that Saudi Arabia could significantly increase crude oil production. While this comes as no great surprise to those of you that have been reading Stuart and Euan’s excellent articles, I thought I would try and summarize the situation as I see it, and expand a little beyond the short summary paragraphs that Leanan is providing, to give more of an overall picture.

To begin you should know that when the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) talks about the size of their oilfields, they refer to the amount of oil that was there at the beginning, rather than that which is left. You can do this calculation for yourself, but I exemplified it with a small calculation on the amount of oil that originally existed in the Abqaiq field , by making some simple assumptions.

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Simple mathematics - The Saudi reserves, GOSPs and water injection

Posted by Heading Out on April 9, 2007 - 9:30am
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: abqaiq, depletion, ghawar, gosp, noc, north ain dar, reserves, saudi arabia, water injection [list all tags]

I thought that, with the indulgence of the more technically qualified of the commentators, I might take a little time to explain in my own way, some of the many issues that were debated here at TOD over the past week. So, this post is going to be a little bit of a simplified technical explanation of some of those issues--and I will try to bring in some of the comments explaining the issues that appeared somewhat far down the list in our comment threads as well.

But first there was an interesting piece of data that I hadn’t seriously noted until I saw the article. It relates to the actual size of the reserves that remain in Saudi Arabia, a subject I usually shy away from since production rates are more interesting. However, given the numbers it is worth consideration and debate as to what these particular values mean.

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Depletion estimates and the CGES

Posted by Heading Out on August 25, 2006 - 12:00pm
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: abqaiq, cges, depletion, saudi arabia [list all tags]

Courtesy of Dave and Matt Simmons I learned that the Center for Global Energy Studies (CGES) has just released a report on Oil's Depletion Rate (pdf file). Since this is the basic concern that underlies a considerable portion of the current debate about Peak Oil, and figures being quoted for depletion vary from 2% to 14%, depending on which field, and which period one is discussing, I looked for some enlightenment in their conclusions.

I learned, to begin with that

Although it seems straightforward, depletion as a concept is not easy to pin down. The very use of the word "depletion" in this context - synonymous as it is with exhaustion - implies that oil resources are being run down and that one day they will dwindle into insignificance. Oil resources may well become insignificant in the years to come, but it is not certain whether this will be due to their physical exhaustion or to the world moving away from oil and towards another source of energy.
Unfortunately, this suggests, as does the tone of much of the article that follows, that being concerned about oil supplies, largely from the point of the reserve available, is a pointless worry. I say unfortunately because this cornucopian view of the world of oil glosses over the changing situation in the world and conceals some of the assumptions that it makes, by hiding them within the overbounding simplification of its argument.
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The depletion of Abqaiq

Posted by Heading Out on August 20, 2006 - 10:52pm
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: abqaiq, depletion, horizontal wells, peak oil, waterflood [list all tags]

This is the third post on the life of a large oilfield, after first looking at a very idealized outline of how a major field might be developed, in the second post I gave some of the events that happened at Abqaiq, which is one of the great oilfields of Saudi Arabia, and which approximated my model. What I would like to try now is to explain some of the reasons that the reality is quite a bit different from the ideal, and some of the geological factors that make the considerable difference between the two.

To begin, Abqaiq, like most giant fields, has been around for a long time, and when it was first developed, by a relatively small group during the Second World War, there were many other things going on that limited development so that it took 4 years to go from drilling the first well to the fifth. Technology was not nearly as advanced as it is now, and the wells were spaced considerably further apart than the spacing I placed mine at in the model. Further while I had estimated the OIP as being some 62 billion barrels, based on porosity, in reality the number was half that. I am grateful that both westexas and plucky underdog had the reasons for this.

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An oilfield in Arabia

Posted by Heading Out on August 16, 2006 - 12:32am
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: abqaiq, saudi arabia [list all tags]

Small grin, and if I can return to yesterday's post to add a short amount of additional information. . . . . As the technology improved, over the life of the field, it was found that oil also occurred in an additional mile of rock to either side of the zone that had been initially expected to hold it. It also turned out that the field extended about 7 miles longer than originally anticipated. However, with the new additions and as the field finally began to play out it turned out that the average thickness of the carbonate grainstone was only 240 ft. If you do the same calculation as before you will find that this changes the initial estimate of the original oil in place to be some 62 billion barrels. This change in reserves as the field is developed is not uncommon in oil fields and is one of the ways in which reserves grow, often quite significantly after the field has started to be developed.

However, this allows me to grin again, because those of you who have read "Twilight in the Desert" may now recognize the dimensions of the Abqaiq field in Saudi Arabia. (Although all the exemplary numbers other than the geometric size of the field, and its porosity and depth were made up by me as I went along to illustrate the developments of the technology that have been applied to that field). The oil has a 36deg API, with a gas/oil ratio of 860 cf/barrel. (It is also sour). The rock permeability is 400 millidarcies in the Arab D formation (this info is from "Twilight"). We can get some other information on this field from a number of other places. So, as a contrast between the myth and the reality you might want to read on.

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