With regards to Bobbyboys comments.(I somehow missed this post when it came out).


Well that is just a projection of water cut and does not necessarily speak to mobility ratio. And I would point out it is not saying the field is at extreme water cut ....the data points go to about 40% water cut and everything beyond that is projection. Note that Aramco's presentation and SPE papers I have mentioned above (I suspect you never bothered to read them) point out the field average water cut did reach as high as 40%, intervention has now dropped it down into the low 30's, this intervention being MRC which are targeted away from the highly fractured zones and the high perm streaks.



well not having read the ASPO paper all I can say from this excerpt is the person is not well read on petroleum geology of the Middle East. Tar mats are common....they do not form they were there to begin with. The Saudis were well aware of the tar mats years ago.
The first SPE paper written on production techniques in and around the tar mat zones was in 1985 presented at the Middle East Oil Technical Confernece in Bahrain.

An Experimental study of techniques for increasing oil recovery from oil reservoirs with tar barriers. Shamaldeen, S.M., SPE 13705-MS

Where it was found water injection into the tar layer enhanced recovery.

The reason for the tilted oil/water contact is still under discussion according to Aramco...aquifer drive is a likely cause but it might also be a consequence of early migration and late uplift, cementation factors etc. The tilted oil water contact was being imployed in the reservoir simulation studies conducted by Aramco as early as 1989:

Evolution of reservoir simulation for a large carbonate reservoir, Al-Daws, Krihnamoorthy, A.M, SPE 17938-MS

Nothwithstanding any of that it doesn't really matter because by traditional extraction process I doubt they refer to MRC wells, which is pretty much all Aramco intends to use for continued in-fill drilling in Ghawar and other fields.



Oh give me a break....desperate attempt?? More like a normal progress of technological implementation in the development of an oil field. Were the first ESP's a desperate attempt to save low pressure oil fields?? Were the first gravel packs a desperate attempt to save wells from sand production? This is a typical portrayal from people unfamiliar with oilfield practices. The Aramco presentation of MRC well effectiveness in Shaybah demonstrates this is well thought out application of semi-new technology. I say semi-new because Petronas has been drilling long reach multi-lateral for quite some time in the Malay basin.



Well lets see the data because Aramco has published their curves illustrating that oil production has not necessarily peaked (it is plateaued but that could be due to facilities constraints) and that water cut is now down around 30%. Making comments like they do above without backing it up with data is pretty pointless. The 60% figure is not backed up by anything but heresay as far as I can tell. The graph of production of oil and water Aramco (the Saleri presentation) has shown is :
http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a61/imoffat/ghawarwatermgt.jpg



I don’t see the point in this given that Aramco announced a number of new facilities and upgrades a couple of years ago, which they have subsequently awarded contracts on. These will supplement current facility capacity in and around Ghawar. They realized all along that they needed greater water and gas handling capacity…they have been saying it for several years…hardly some deep dark secret. Besides that the higher water cuts are in individual wells (which were intervened), not the field average....as I explained previously.

And Simmons comment :


and what praytell is that “scientific” analysis based on….personal intuition from his vast experience as a finance banker? I’m sure that Aramco is fairly convinced their strategy is sound, otherwise they would invest the money elsewhere.



I’m sorry but this shows some ignorance on your part as to how fluid production works. If there is no aquifer support and the oil has a reasonably high GOR it is a guarantee they will inject water into the acquifer on the fringe of the field and reinject gas into the structurally highest part of the pool. The water is injected mainly as voidage replacement/pressure maintenance and the gas is reinjected to keep the gas cap from expanding. The whole point of the MRC wells is they are drilled in such a manner as to have the maximum contact area with a particular reservoir, away from extremely high permeability zones (ie. Fractures) and a reasonable standoff from the oil/water contact and the gas/oil contact. This allows for production at high rates with relatively low pressure drawdown. As such there is much less chance of water coning, not a greater chance as you seem to infer. Again I suggest you read the SPE papers on MRC wells that I pointed to earlier. The Saudis are well aware of production issues....why would they invest billions into facility construction if they believed they would only produce water? I suspect they know a fair bit more about the reservoir than you do.
I think you a very mislead if you believe the petroleum engineers working for Aramco are a bunch of "dumb sand niggahs" as I heard one racist Texan recently claim. The management at Aramco may be political appointments but the technical staff are as well trained and knowledgeable as anyone from the Western companies and they have access to state of the art technology.

Fascinating story here:

"The Saudis May Have Enough Oil"

Observation: They've only drilled 30 wildcat wells

Conclusion: They have almost a trillion barrels

Why is oil 62 a barrel then, and why can't they increase output?
How does it ruin a well to pump more than recommended limit amount?

If they ahve a trillion barrels, then we won't run out this year.

It's not about them running out, but about everyone else not playing catch up to demand.

The crux of the issue is that world demanding increasing at 1.5mbd - 2mbd means that every 5-7 years, we have to add another Saudi Arabia in terms of production. Even if SA can keep up in production, there are plenty of places in the world were production is lucky to be at a standstill.

Does anyone realize that is 35,000 gallons per minute of oil coming out of the ground?

That is a large flow rate.


how many wells are involved to make that flow rate?

It has to due with the water that is injected to maintain reservoir pressure. This is an oversimplified explanation, but it should suffice. When water flows through rock, water erosion takes place. This is unavoidable. The water tends to erode the weakest rock first and a channel begins to form. Once one of these channels reaches the well bore, the water cut at the well head increases dramatically. Furthermore, they also tend to permanently bypass pockets of oil as they form. This oil is now considered inert and can no longer be forced to the well bore by water injection because the water simply goes around it through the precut channels. The only way to get at this oil now would be to use artificial lift (pumps) which is much less efficient. By holding back on the production rates in a specific field, you give the water more time to sweep all of the available oil towards the well bore and you minimize the development of water channels. The real trick is finding the optimal production rate that balances the economic need to produce as much as possible with the geologic need of not ruining the reservoir. That is as much art as it is science.

Geko45

Sort of right but not exactly as far as Ghawar is concerned. Subsurface "water erosion" might happen in relatively unconsolidated sandstone reservoirs which we see for instance in the Tertiary offshore Gulf of Mexico or West Africa. However, the reservoir at the greater Ghawar area is mainly very indurated carbonates of the Jurassic Arab formation. Water bypassing is common but it is due to two factors....fractures and several high permeability streaks in the Arab. Aramco is managing this with the MRC wells....they can access unswept compartments, avoid fractures and high perm streaks as well as keep drawdown to a minimal while maintaining high production rates. According to Aramco about 60% of their production in the northern part of Ghawar is coming from behind the flood front.
The problem that seems to be alluded to in toilet in the desert is that of fracing...i.e. pumping so much water into the reservoir that you exceed the frac gradient. Looking through all of the SPE papers I saw no reference to artificial and accidental fracs in the Arab although they have happened in the underlying Permian Khuff which is the big gas producer in the area.

Hey now, I know some people like that and they are very straight forward, honest, friendly people. Maybe a little rough around the edges but they can make a damn fine cup of tea and build a nice bonfire too!

So I read the whole thread and probably will read it again. First off I would like to thank rockdoc123 and bobbyboy for saving me a few bucks. I was going to pickup Twilight but this format is much more exciting! Kudos to both of you for putting in the time here.

I would like to draw an analogy here if I may. The aforementioned folks are 2 vets poking at the 50 year old elephant Ghawar with rockdoc123 saying she's got some life left and bobbyboy is loading the shotgun. That huge enema apparatus would be the water injection I suppose. Some graduate students are hanging around throwing in their 2 cents and the Saudi zoo keepers are saying everything is fine, look at some of our other exhibits why don't ya'. It would really help to have a complete medical history on Ghawar but for reasons beyond our control the zoo keepers just can't do that. So we have bits and pieces. When this elephant dies the zoo ain't far behind. We all know the question is not if but when, so everybody is a little tense and agitated.

bobbyboy, you remind me of the seasoned vet who has eyeballed the specimen, heard the talk at the shop and knows this animal is dying fast. It is hard to doubt you know what you are talking about.

rockdoc123 on the other hand is taking a fresh approach and wants to review the compiled case history before coming to a verdict, nothing wrong with that because he is obviously an expert. He really cares about the beast!

Anyway, carry on...I am just the monkey in the cage next door.



I'll see your Maugeri and raise you a Campbell
The Supply Side: Before It's Too Late

Since i don't have a background in geology it is hard for me to assess future discoveries in Saudi-Arabia. The USGS estimates that approximately 80-90 billion barrels can potentially be discovered, albeit fields of smaller size. Aramco notes that explatory wells are clustered in and around discovered fields. The wildcat drilling that has been done shows that in these areas it isn't worthwile to dril (drilling doesn't lead to significant discoveries).

But the Rub' al Khali (empty quarter), northern basins along border with Iraq and offshore Red Sea Basin have been under-explored.

Maybe Rockdock can give an estimate of the potential of these regions? And were are the Saudi's currently drilling (they are finding a few small fields, but in what region?)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Looking at reserve numbers as cited by Rockdock123 (I added 1994 petroconsultant data)

Ghawar

(petroconsultants) 1994 - 117 billion barrels (P+P)
(petroconsultants) 1997 - 114 billion barrels (P+P)
IHS Energy 2004 - 140 billion barrels (P + P)
IHS Energy 2005 - 115 billion barrels (P)

(petroconsultants) Cumulative production 1994 (40 billion barrels)
(Saudi Aramco) Cumulative production 2004 (55 billion barrels)

So given Rockdocks analyses the internal numbers are correct as cited by Saudi Aramco.

In order to know a little bit more two questions need to be answered:

Is the 1994/1997 estimate of 117 billion barrels correct?

Is the addition of 25 billion barrels genuine and what kind of revision is this?

A picture from a Merril Lynch analysis of 2005



So if Ghawar has 25 billion barrels of probable, than there is 7 billion left of probable. Don't know if this is consistent with the other fields current P+P numbers. Or does the 140 billion barrel (P+P) number of Ghawar totally fall under the 260 billion barrels number for proven reserves?

This linkis very interesting. SA may produce more, but the OPEC crude production growth potential looks very limited.

I too am interested in what reserves Saudia Arabia has.

However it's not clear to me why we don't already have a fairly accurate & trusted figure in the public domain.

Why doesn't Saudia Arabia simply make the data available? Surely they know? Or is it not that simple?

Perhaps some Western politicians have simply been given the data by Saudi already?

Additionally, at least a few of the many hundreds of non-Saudi workers and corporations working in the area must have a pretty clear idea of what the situation is. Have any of these (perhaps accidentally) spilled the beans?

Failing that, surely various research companies [and of course the intelligence agencies] must be able to piece together all the various fragments of data to ascertain what the reserves are.

(In WW2 we used some clever techniques to "remote sense" the German economy in quite a lot of detail. In this era of the Internet, satellites etc surely Saudi Arabia could be an open book?)

So ... WHY DON'T WE KNOW?

It seems very silly that we need to run a forum like this just to get even a vague idea of what the Saudi situation is.

We don't know because the Saudi's have their own interest in keeping their reserve numbers secret, causing the western world not to plan for renewables in the manner that we should. Letting us believe that the oil age will never end, and the black gold will forever stay cheap.

Analysts can't figure it out because there is just so little data available

Same reason why Israel doesn't publish data on troop movements, or the US publish data on where their missle silos are. State secrets

Any Neo here
If only you can download all info into your brain. Many petroleum related books are available here. Anything from reservoir enginneering to process management

http://thepiratebay.org/details.php?id=3453473&fl

This book is the real diamond.
/1-Chemical Petrochemical and Process Collection/CD2/LYONS, W. C. (1996). Standard Handbook of Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering (2 vols.)/Standard_Handbook_Petroleum_Natural_Gas_Engineering_VOLUME2.pdf

It teached you how the industry estimates reservoir size.

Standard Handbook of Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering

Happy reading.

There's an article at money.iwon.com about Sauidi production capacity being up due to the Haradh field coming into service.

The interesting part was this:

"Total oil production capacity is expected to rise by 2.3 million b/d in the period 2006-2009, but the kingdom is also likely to see production declines of 800,000 b/d over this period as old fields grow less productive, Saudi oil and security analyst Nawaf Obaid said in a recent report.
As a result, Saudi production capacity is expected to rise a net 1.5 million b/d to a total 12.5 million b/d by 2009."

Only 1.5 mdb by 2009?! With demand growing close to 2 mbpd each year? So much for the Saudis being able to produce 15 mbpd.