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THE Ghawar Thread (merged)

General discussions of the systemic, societal and civilisational effects of depletion.
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Re: The status of Ghawar

Unread postby Newsseeker » Mon 09 Apr 2007, 08:57:39

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cobra_Strike', 'T')heOilDrum posts hurt my head at times, I will leave others to work through the nitty gritty...however I would like to know what they are talking about....other then a general idea. Too many spaghetti graphs.

I agree. Sometimes it seems like a foreign language or some graph that has a line going off into the stratosphere and I am clueless. The only thing I get out of the article is that Ghawar is past peak. It could be a faulty assumption, though. I just don't know. The one guy that is KISS is Westexas or Jeffery J. Brown who uses Hubbert Linearization which another article that I barely understood on TOD said was faulty. My head spins sometimes but in the end TOD is unrivalled for content. I learn a lot or at least think I do. I am grateful.
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Re: The status of Ghawar

Unread postby Revi » Mon 09 Apr 2007, 09:14:00

Scroll to the bottom of Stuart Standiford's post on the Oil Drum. The last graph makes it understandable. We're in trouble. Along with Cantarell and maybe Burghan we are losing the biggest oil fields on earth. Simmons says in End of Suburbia that if Saudi Arabia has peaked, the world has peaked. We're there.

I was thinking that now the oil left in the ground is worth more and more each year. Why pump it fast? Why turn it into dollars, which lose value? They'll hold on to it, and pump it slowly.
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Re: The status of Ghawar

Unread postby Eli » Mon 09 Apr 2007, 09:53:02

Simmons wrote Twilight in the Desert, Kunstler wrote The End of Suburbia ( and is a wonk ion my opinion).

Anyway, anyone who has been on this site longer than a week knew what you were talking about.

The guys at TOD love those graphs but they are quite hard for the average person to visualize.
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Re: The status of Ghawar

Unread postby Zardoz » Mon 09 Apr 2007, 10:30:14

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SD_Scott', 'T')here's certainly a lot of intellectual self indulgence going on over there...

Yes, but intellectuals in any field often indulge themselves.

Point is, the gang at TOD is accomplishing things that nobody else on this planet is doing right now. The value of their efforts to provide the hard data required to reveal to us all what is really going on cannot be overstated.
"Thank you for attending the oil age. We're going to scrape what we can out of these tar pits in Alberta and then shut down the machines and turn out the lights. Goodnight." - seldom_seen
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Re: The status of Ghawar

Unread postby SD_Scott » Mon 09 Apr 2007, 12:06:26

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Zardoz', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SD_Scott', 'T')here's certainly a lot of intellectual self indulgence going on over there...
Yes, but intellectuals in any field often indulge themselves. Point is, the gang at TOD is accomplishing things that nobody else on this planet is doing right now. The value of their efforts to provide the hard data required to reveal to us all what is really going on cannot be overstated.

Oh I agree, I wouldn't want them to change a thing. It looks like HO has just posted a summary of the recent Ghawar discussions. I read it and it's top notch as usual.
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Re: The status of Ghawar

Unread postby Revi » Mon 09 Apr 2007, 12:37:17

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Eli', 'S')immons wrote Twilight in the Desert, Kunstler wrote The End of Suburbia ( and is a wonk ion my opinion). Anyway, anyone who has been on this site longer than a week knew what you were talking about. The guys at TOD love those graphs but they are quite hard for the average person to visualize.

Simmons is interviewed in End of Suburbia. That's what I was talking about. So is Kunstler. I know Gregory Greene who did End of Suburbia.
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Re: The status of Ghawar

Unread postby fluffy » Tue 10 Apr 2007, 07:23:45

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Revi', 'S')croll to the bottom of Stuart Standiford's post on the Oil Drum. The last graph makes it understandable. We're in trouble. Along with Cantarell and maybe Burghan we are losing the biggest oil fields on earth. Simmons says in End of Suburbia that if Saudi Arabia has peaked, the world has peaked. We're there.

Cantarell is certainly past peak, that's beyond reasonable doubt.
Burgan, I'm not as sure. The field was almost certainly damaged in the first gulf war, but Kuwait always seems (even on low reserve estimates) to have had huge R/P ratios. Gwahar - as far as TOD goes, it seems to have a few years left. It's just flustrating not knowing; we seem to be at the limits of available information. I often get the impression that too many doomers are itching to proclaim the death of Gwahar.

What I would say is - watch Russia. Personally, I think that the possiblity of significant declines in Russia - i.e. 500kb/d per year or more - is much higher, since a lot of the recent production increases have been built on more more depleted fields and a smaller total resource base.
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GHAWAR: an estimate of remaining oil reserves and production

Unread postby Newsseeker » Sat 28 Apr 2007, 08:54:42

I know this has gotten a lot of air time but I am posting it for others who, like myself, are interested in the future of KSA.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ')The Base Case production model shows Ghawar on the edge of irreversible production decline that may start around 2010 or it may already have started. The High Case production model is more robust and shows plateau production maintained until around 2013.

link
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Re: Asphalt prices

Unread postby whereagles » Sat 28 Apr 2007, 17:37:55

What exactly is the problem of watering out? That's what happening at Abqaiq and it's still producing steadily... less than peak, of course, but still in a very consistent manner.
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Re: Asphalt prices

Unread postby kjmclark » Sat 28 Apr 2007, 20:14:54

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')hat exactly is the problem of watering out?

Pstarr got most of it. The other problem with watering out is the problem that fractional_flow pointed out. A good deal of the oil is bypassed, and once you get to a certain percentage of water, the amount of oil in the mix drops off quickly. Water flooding works great until that point, but then you get so much water that it's generally more sensible to just close off that particular well.
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Re: Asphalt prices

Unread postby Windmills » Sat 28 Apr 2007, 20:21:54

Increased water cutting is also a general indication that the well is heading toward decline and failure. It's being depleted and losing pressure and needs to be kept alive up by having water pumped in.
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Re: Asphalt prices suggest Ghawar has peaked

Unread postby steam_cannon » Sun 29 Apr 2007, 00:45:09

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Windmills', 'I')ncreased water cutting is also a general indication that the well is heading toward decline and failure. It's being depleted and losing pressure and needs to be kept alive up by having water pumped in.
It's worse then that, the oil and water mix and become surprisingly difficult to separate.
Oil and water do mix after all. The trick is to remove any gas dissolved in the water: link
Eventually I'm going to post an article on my website on this, it is very easy to do and has many useful applications, like making your own flavorings/stable salad dressings...

But one of the big problems in oil extraction is that degassed water and water under pressure often mix very well with oil. This means you have a liquid hydrate like sludge coming out of your oil well. I had a friend who had an oil well on their farm in PA. It was a shallow well and they had a big tank so oil would separate out from water intrusions. But the stuff from the bottom of the tank was still pretty oily and left nasty oily residue on the land where the water was drained. The deal is worse with deeper wells. So when a well has water intrusion, a lot of the stuff that comes up, water and oil cannot easily be separated. It's surprising but interesting too:
Image
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Re: Asphalt prices suggest Ghawar has peaked

Unread postby TreebeardsUncle » Sun 29 Apr 2007, 03:03:32

Ok. So, when will this put a crimp on the profligately indulgent lifestyles of American drivers?
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Re: Asphalt prices suggest Ghawar has peaked

Unread postby whereagles » Sun 29 Apr 2007, 05:12:25

hum.. if water flooding is that much of a problem, why is it that Abqaiq, with its 95% water cut, is still producing 100 000s barrels.. every single day?
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Re: Asphalt prices suggest Ghawar has peaked

Unread postby Newsseeker » Sun 29 Apr 2007, 09:01:44

Leave it up to the Oil Drum to find that asphalt is linked to the crash of Ghawar. Time will tell and this summer will be very revealing when it comes to KSA production.
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Re: Asphalt prices suggest Ghawar has peaked

Unread postby Eli » Sun 29 Apr 2007, 10:16:14

Well, I would bet that all these US refinery problems are happening because the quality of the oil they are using is dropping off. Light sweet oil peaked awhile back now we are being forced to use crude with more sulfur and of a heavier grade.
The sulfur is very corrosive and eats up refinery equipment. This would explain why the US refineries are having such trouble ramping up this year. I am sure KSA can produce more tar laced with heavy metals but not more light sweet.
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Re: Asphalt prices suggest Ghawar has peaked

Unread postby MD » Sun 29 Apr 2007, 10:57:50

I'd like to hear "the word on the street". Who's talking to the refinery workers? What's the trend?
Stop filling dumpsters, as much as you possibly can, and everything will get better.

Just think it through.
It's not hard to do.
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