pstarr - Nice cross section but it hurts my eyes. LOL. Oil patch protocol: oil = green; NG = red; water = blue. But even then a bit misleading: the oil water level is all the way to the top of the reservoir. Currently about 35% to 40% of the production coming up the average Ghawar well is water. IOW a well producing 10,000 bbls per day of FLUID is producing around 4,000 bbls of water and 6,000 bbls of oil. IOW a 40% 'water cut". Most of the stripper oil wells in Texas (doing less then 15 bopd) have a water cut of 90% to 98%. thus the term "brown stained water". The 70 year old reservoir the Rockman is currently drilling hz wells in has produced 28 million bbls of oil and 100+ million bbls of water. It was producing 12 bopd from 5 wells when the Rockman's first hz well came in at 200 bopd. BTW that well is still making a lot of oil but has an 85% water cut.
Took the Rockman 10 years (and $90/bbl oil) to convince someone he had a good idea. LOL
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This is an oil industry jihad.
Re: This is an oil industry jihad.
by ROCKMAN » Tue 08 Mar 2016, 17:36:55
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Re: This is an oil industry jihad.
by rockdoc123 » Tue 08 Mar 2016, 17:38:03
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he thing is, because they are pumping just as hard as they can right now KSA is demonstrating that their claimed 'spare capacity' is just a claim, and not much more than a claim. In the past they have used that claim to calm the markets when oil supplies were tight at $100/bbl but I am not so sure they will be able to do so in the future now that they have maxed out production.
I don’t see what the evidence is that they have “maxed out production”. They have increased production to secure market share but that doesn’t necessarily require producing everything they can. I would expect that they are producing on a fine balance where they are trying to maintain a price they can work with while not ceding market share….it isn’t working out because the US shale companies have been producing as hard as they can for various reasons. Back years ago we talked about the Saudi mega-projects which had the goal of getting spare capacity to 12.5 MM bbls/d. All of the fields that were planned for improvements in terms of MRC wells, water and gas handling etc were completed with the exception of Manifa which was postponed due to perceived low demand for that type of crude. The fact the billions of dollars planned were spent on these projects (as verified by Western service companies) and SA were adamant back in 2010-11 that the results were better than anticipated suggests that spare capacity should still be somewhere close to 12 MMB/d. Remember that spare capacity refers not to something where the tap can just be turned on but a situation where production can be brought on with a minimal of expenditure and work (i.e. no new drilling or large construction costs).
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he red is oil, floating on a sea of water (the blue and green). The Saudis have been pumping these reservoirs for 60 years from the top and have skimmed off all but the last oil sheen on the surface. Now those brilliant engineers have taken up where we started tight-shale, running perforated horizontal well bores along the very top of the reservoir trying desperately to keep production
This is somewhat misleading. The cross sections shown are from a portion of Ghawar and not representative of the whole field. As I pointed out a few years ago the northern part of Ghawar is definitely well past its 50% level of depletion but that being said studies done by Aramco and published in SPE point to the likelihood that there is about 25% recovery still remaining. That’s a fair bit of oil. Also the wells you speak of are called MRC or maximum reservoir contact wells. They were not drilled to “skim off the oil on top” but rather were drilled as a means of dealing with high water cuts from intersected fractures. I spoke to this on a Saudi thread here years ago which seems to have disappeared into ether space. The idea was that with detailed seismic Aramco could identify the faults and major fractures and by drilling the long reach “fish scale” multi-laterals they could avoid the fault zones and produce the wells are lower draw down pressure thus reducing the risk of water coning. When I last looked this had been a very effective strategy limiting water cut to a relatively steady 35%. Most of these fields have a strong water drive so recovery will be high as long as the water cut can be managed. Aramco also has the ability to intervene in MRC wells where one lateral might be pulling more water than they would like. That lateral can be shut-in from the surface and a new lateral can be drilled and completed with the use of expandable liners which avoids decreased production as a consequence of tubing size. Aramco is only recently starting to look at the shale resources in the Rub Al Khali which should be substantive if the rocks are fracable.
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Re: This is an oil industry jihad.
by rockdoc123 » Tue 08 Mar 2016, 17:43:03
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he 70 year old reservoir the Rockman is currently drilling hz wells in has produced 28 million bbls of oil and 100+ million bbls of water. It was producing 12 bopd from 5 wells when the Rockman's first hz well came in at 200 bopd. BTW that well is still making a lot of oil but has an 85% water cut.
this is something I've mentioned in the past as well. There are many reservoirs that produce tons of oil at very high water cuts, you just need to know what to do with the produced water. In the Sudan brand new wells drilled into the Cretaceous reservoirs commonly had water cuts at 90% due to the very high vertical permeability in the reservoir. They produced at high rates and the water was disposed of in settling ponds (where it was treated and then used for agriculture where it was badly needed) or reinjected. High water cuts do not mean the death of a reservoir, it is a problem when you have a lower permeability reservoir and you are coning water past hydrocarbons left in the pore space either due to coning along fractures or an adverse mobility ratio.
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Re: Sea Level Rise
by ralfy » Tue 08 Mar 2016, 21:43:24
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('americandream', '
')I beg to differ. No one is in a position to comment until they experience these daily events and I tend to counter these dismissals for being ignorant and akin to the flat earth mentality. That said and given their sheer magnitude, and the fact that I have yet to fully understand them, I talk very obliquely about them. I have been struggling with them for years in a bid to make them accessible without destroying their commercial value for me.
')I beg to differ. No one is in a position to comment until they experience these daily events and I tend to counter these dismissals for being ignorant and akin to the flat earth mentality. That said and given their sheer magnitude, and the fact that I have yet to fully understand them, I talk very obliquely about them. I have been struggling with them for years in a bid to make them accessible without destroying their commercial value for me.
Stock market transactions have nothing to do with natural selection, which is part of evolution.
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