The Oil Drum: Depletion Levels in Ghawar

Ghawar is the largest conventional oil field in the world. The field is entirely owned and operated by Saudi Aramco, the nationalized Saudi oil company. Relatively little is known about Ghawar because the company and Saudi government closely guard field performance information and per-field production details. Available information is predominantly historical (pre-nationalization), from incidental technical publications, or anecdotal.

The reason to understand Ghawar is simple: If Ghawar is in decline, it is very highly likely that world supply has plateaued.



In this post, Stuart Staniford has put together what may end up being the definitive piece of research on the world’s largest field. It is an amazing tome, bringing together his fascinating original research and the extant research on Ghawar. It is not for the faint of heart, but it is written in an accessible style.

Stuart states: “I will analyze six or seven separate lines of technical evidence, and argue they all point to a consistent picture: Yes, the northern half of Ghawar is quite depleted. And yes, this probably explains at least part of recent production declines. Furthermore, it is likely that more declines in Saudi production are on the way.”

If Stuart’s reasoning is correct, this is not very good news at all.

Much more after the jump to The Oil Drum.