....carbon storage through CO2 injection....
I know math isn't your strong suit, but think about this for a second. If Aramco finds a natural CO2 reservoir and they drill it and produce it and inject that CO2 into an oil reservoir as part of an EOR project, the net amount of carbon sequestration is zero, because the CO2 used in the EOR project would never have been produced if not for the EOR project.
Furthermore, many studies have already shown that CO2 EOR projects, even those where the CO2 is recovered from factories etc. (which isn't what KSA is doing), accomplish no carbon sequestion, and usually result in MORE CO2 emissions.
Why is that you might wonder? Well, let me explain it to you.
Lets see how you are on chemistry......do you know that oil is a hydrocarbon? What do you think happens when oil is brought into contact with CO2?
Oil is immiscible in water....thats means it can't dissolve in water so during a water flood the oil is pushed ahead of the rising water line. However, CO2 will DISSOLVE in oil. That means the oil produced as a consequence of a CO2 EOR project contains a lot of dissolved CO2, which is then released during storage, refining, etc. Even more CO2 comes up with the produced oil. The net CO2 sequestion is about zero.
So CO2 EOR projects don't effectively sequester CO2---something everyone in the industry has known for decades... except you apparently.
no-CO2-sequestion-in-enhanced-oil-recoveryFurthermore.....in spite of your dissembling the CO2 EOR project carried out in part of Ghawar clearly did have enhanced oil recovery as a goal. I quote from a report on the project:
Saudi Aramco’s first test of using carbon dioxide (CO2) injection to extend the life of a field.... Fast Start for First Saudi CO2 EOR ProjectRead the sentence I quote above in bold font. It clearly says the CO2 EOR project was a test of using CO2 in an EOR program to extend the life of Ghawar. And at first it seemed to work well....except that the part of Ghawar field where they were testing had a 98% water cut.....so boosting oil production by four times just means they got it down to a 90% water cut---apparently not enough to make it worthwhile to expand the expensive CO2 EOR program.
You and Michael Lynch are not allowed your own set of facts. Your claim that Ghawar's falling rate of oil production would be reversed if only they spent some money on more drilling and modern EOR recovery methods ignores the fact that Aramco already is doing more drilling and spending more money on a modern CO2 EOR project---and it didn't work well enough to warrant expanding the program.
there should be no problem whatsoever producing at 5 MMB/d ....
Except there is.
Lets look at the facts.
The field has been producing for over half a century now.
Parts of Ghawar now have a 98% water cut. Thats extremely high. That means the Saudis can drill and do CO2 EOR all they want, and they still aren't going to get much oil out of those parts of Ghawar.
It isn't too hard to figure that as parts of Ghawar are depleted of oil, the overall production capacity will fall. And thats just what has been reported.
An independent review of Saudi Aramco's oil production facilities just released as part of their current bond proposal reports that the actual current maximum production rate possible at Ghawar today is only 3.8 MMB/d.....and thats far below the number you put forward just above and down more than 20% from estimates of Ghawars production capacity made by the EIA and other analysts just a few years ago.
Cheers!