Every oil field, no matter how large, is finite. Sooner or later it will become empty (or, better defined, it becomes too expensive too bring up the oil) and so the oil pumps are shut down.
Ghawar is the largest oil field in the world. IT is approx. 175 miles long by 20 miles wide. It
represents about 30% of Saudi’s total proven reserves and has historically represented
between 50 to as much as 70% of Saudi’s daily production.
basic info link: Ghawar by Wiki
Interactive Map
detailed map
Today the estimated daily production of the field is 4,500,000 to 5,000,000 barrels of oil. The estimated maximum is 8,500,000 barrels a day.
60 Billion barrels have been pumped out of the field, to date. How many barrels are left and how long will this field last?
more below the fold
According to Saudi Aramco the Ghawar oil field has 70 Billion barrels of oil left in it.
So how long can it continue to pump oil?
a little math: 70,000,0000,000/4,500,000/daily production (minimum production)=15,555 days or 42 years. or 70,000,000,000/8,500,000 (maximum production)=8235 days or 22 years.
So why this diary?
Well... between 1989 and 1990, without any major oil drilling, the estimated oil reserves of Saudi Arabia increased from 170 Billion barrels or 257 Billion barrels. see the chart in the middle of this article
87 Billion barrels were, as far as I can tell, invented for political or economic reasons. I believe, but I couldn't find a reference, that in 1989 the rules for the OPEC quotas were changed. The more oil reserves a country has the larger the daily oil production quota.
to support that theory, in the article above, the UAE, Iran, Iraq and Venezuela, also between 1989 and 1990 increased their oil reserves by:
61 Billion barrels by the UAE
44 Billion barrels by Iran
53 Billion barrels by Iraq
26 Billion barrels by Venezuela
Combined with the Saudi addition, 271 Billion barrels of oil were "discovered" sometime in 1989/1990.
(I am aware that what they may have done was to add in the more expensive, difficult to recover potential oil, instead of just the cheap easy to find "light sweet" oil. However while Saudi can produce/pump millions of barrels of "heavy" oil the oil refineries to turn that heavy oil into gasoline/heating oil have NOT been built, at least in the US they haven't. And it takes years, many years to build a refinery in the US....)
So, that 257 Billion barrels in oil reserve by Saudi Arabia is, in my opinion, a work of psuedo-fiction.
So, I wonder how much is left in Ghawar? 70 Billion as stated by Saudi Arabia or something less? 50 Billion maybe?
if 50 Billion, then the lifetime of Ghawar drops to perhaps 15 years.
There is also this: In April 2006 a spokesman for Saudi Aramco stated that the companies mature (old) oil fields, of which Ghawar is one, are declining at 8% a year. Now, there isn't any detail in this statement. So, I've got no idea which fields are declining and at what rate. But, Ghawar is the biggest and it has been in production since 1951, so if it is the declining at a rate of 8% a year, then in, at most, 13 years there will be NO production. Of course Ghawar might only be declining at a rate that is less than 8%, but, on the other hand, that rate of decline might, and, in my opinion, WILL change for the worse in the future.
the world produces about 85-90 million barrels of oil a day. Losing say 5 million of that would probably suck. Iraq, by the way, pumps about 2 to 2.5 million barrels a day.
and from: THE WORLD’S GIANT OILFIELDS WARNING this is a 67-page PDF. The PDF isn't dated, but from reading it, I'd say it was made in 2001/2.
Around 20 other new giant fields now discovered, but yet to begin producing, are each
expected to exceed 100,000-barrel per day output. However, no new field now being
developed is projected to have daily production in excess of 250,000 barrels. In sharp
contrast, the world’s 19 largest "old giant fields" still produce an average over
500,000 barrels per day, in spite of an average age of almost 70 years!
20 Oil fields at 100,000 barrels... So, 2 Million barrels a day minimum, perhaps as much as 5 million barrels. 20 NEW oil fields might match Ghawar, maybe.
also:
Most of the world’s true giant oilfields were found decades ago. In the past two
decades, most oil and gas discoveries have been quite small fields. Occasionally a new
billion-plus barrel oilfield is announced. But even these "giant" finds tend to be tiny, in
terms of daily production, compared with the giant fields found 50+ years ago. The last
four oilfields found with a productive capacity that exceeded one million barrels a day
were China’s Daquing field discovered in 1959, Western Siberia’s Samotlor in 1965,
Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay in 1968 and Mexico’s Cantarell field in 1976. After Cantarell, no
new field has come close to this one million barrels a day production level. Only a small
group of fields found post 1980 have ever produced 500,000 barrels per day, and many
of these new giants are now very depleted.
The PDF goes into detail about the Siberian and Mexican oil fields.
There are a handful of deepwater projects now under development whose output should
have peak production as high as 250,000 barrels per day. There have been two or
three recent onshore Middle East discoveries with multi-billion barrels of probable
reserves. None of these onshore discoveries are close to beginning production and so
far, none seem to have the capacity to produce more than 300,000 to 400,000 barrels
per day and only by 2010 at the earliest.
These are some Iranian and Saudi fields.
In 1970, Saudi’s giant Ghawar field, which still ranks as the world’s largest oilfield ever
discovered, was producing just over 2 million barrels a day. This field finally peaked in
1990 when it briefly produced in excess of 6.5 million barrels per day. This production
rate resulted in some damage to the reservoir and the field was never again produced
at such a rate. Its current recent production is estimated to be about 4.5 million barrels
per day.
only 6.5 million max/daily output in this PDF, not the 8 million in other articles.
While some public data is available for what many of the world’s population of giant
oilfields collectively produce, there is no data on the decline rates for any of these
giants. Enough public data is available to infer decline curves for fields like Prudhoe
Bay or the North Sea fields, though little attention is paid to this data. Outside these few
fields, little data exists on most other large fields to help someone make an educated
guess at the decline curve.
Some industry observers have argued that many giant fields might never decline, or that
this occurrence is still decades away, as new technologies continuously enlarge
reserves and allow greater percents of the oil in place to be recovered. However, there
is little public data to support this thesis. The declines that can be observed in some
giant oilfields also make this thesis very suspect.
NOTE: There is NO data on the decline rates for giant oil fields. Someone is hiding something, I'd think...
some Iraq data for the Iraq=oil takeover people:
Iraq has a multitude of fields that have never produced or fields that are in need of a
massive rehabilitation. Its 15 billion barrel West Qurna field could potentially produce
around 400,000 barrels per day. Its one billion barrel Rataw oilfield, its Majnoon field,
which has an expected initial output of 300,000 barrels per day with later development
yielding possibly 600,000 barrels per day or more and its Nahr Umar field with potential
of producing around 400,000 to 500,000 barrels per day of light gravity crude are all
great examples of new giant fields yet to be exploited. But all these projects are merely
"on the drawing board," awaiting the lifting of United Nations sanctions before
beginning. In the meantime, Iraq’s Kirkuk field and the two Rumaila fields are old, badly
overproduced and could soon decline as rapidly as the Western Siberian oilfields did
after years of bad reservoir management.
Hmmm. Bad reservoir management. Given the corruption that is so common in the energy/oil ministries in the region, I wonder how many other oil fields were/are also under bad management.... (I wonder if that statement needs to be expanded to any oil field given the corruption throughout the oil industry...hmmm. Yes, I think so.)
and some data on Iranian oil fields:
Iran recently discovered a new field,
Azadegan, with over 25 billion barrels of oil in place. Estimated recovery rates are
around 5 to 6 billion barrels. This is the largest oilfield found in Iran since 1964. Yet,
this new giant is currently not expected to produce in excess of 300,000 to 400,000
barrels per day.
Early in 2001, Iran also announced the discovery of another very large offshore oilfield,
Dasht-e Abadan. According to National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) officials, this field
could contain reserves "comparable" in size to Azadegan. But, no daily production
estimates for this field have ever been disclosed.
Some additional info/explanation on why Ghawar (and other oil fields) decline.
from: The Ghawar Oil Field: How Much Is Left?
The word "recoverable" is particularly important, as the gross amount of oil in the ground is less significant than the amount that can easily be harvested at a given level of extractive technology. While modern techniques can certainly boost the amount of oil that can be extracted per oil field, the question of how expensive the operation turns out to be remains extremely pertinent. Once oil extraction becomes too difficult, and therefore expensive, it becomes economically infeasible to attempt to remove the remaining supply.
I think that the cost for the Saudi's to pump up the oil at Ghawar is about 4 to 5 dollars a barrel, by the way. The cost is below $10 a barrel, no matter what.
Part of the "recoverable" oil equation concerns the methods used to increase an oil field's production. One of the most common ways of doing so is by injecting massive amounts of water, which has the effect of forcing deep-lying oil deposits to the surface where they can be harvested.
It is not a particularly good sign when a substantial amount of water is being used to "goose" production in a particular field. With consistent use of this technique, the volume of water that comes out along with the oil increases, while the amount of oil correspondingly decreases. Eventually, the yield contains mostly water, at which point the oil field is no longer worth operating.
Thus, it is indeed disquieting to note that the volume of water used to obtain Ghawar's oil has been steadily increasing. In fact, on a daily basis, an astounding 7 million barrels of seawater is being injected into the old oil reservoir to increase the oil flow. According to industry experts a few months ago Ghawar was producing 55 percent water -- in other words, more than half of the fluid brought to the surface was not oil.
They are pumping 7,000,000 barrels of seawater into Ghawar a day, so to keep the pressure constant, I'd assume that they are pumping out 7,000,000 barrels of an oil/water mix. And, if the 55% water/ 45% oil mix is correct, then they are only pumping 3,150,000 barrels of oil a day, NOT 4.5 to 5 million barrels a day.
other articles on Ghawar
Ghawar: The Anatomy of the Worldâs Largest Oil Field*
The Ghawar Oil Field, Saudi Arabia
Some food for thought about Peak oil, no?
My thoughts: As I tried to research this diary, I came across different data in every article. Given the corruption and the politics of the oil industry, I have to wonder just what data is real, which the corruption fixed as "real" and which the politics spun as "real". And I just don't know...
Guessing, hopefully, with some basis in fact and being hopeful that other, non-economic factors don't screw up the world that badly. (You know, like say Castro dying and Venezuela and the US, then, sending troops into Cuba to "stabilize" the situation.)
In about 10 years I hope, and it's a thin hope, that the price of the energy of a barrel of oil will semi-stabilize at perhaps $80. How did I get that figure? Refineries that use this Coal to Oil process turn a profit at about $40/barrel, I believe. So I doubled that cost to account for a profit and corruption margin. It could be lower, say $60, if say this Bio-mass process or other similar processes become popular. It could be higher, say 100+ dollars, if Oil Shale has to be used in a large scale.
But for the next 10 years or so, the price of oil will be very unstable. There just aren’t enough refineries. There aren’t enough transport, either pipelines or ships, to move the oil around the world. And finally there just isn't enough oil being pumped out of the ground, and the major fields that the oil is being pumped from WILL decline. So, any problem will effect the price of oil, there just isn't any extra capacity in the system...
This also might give some more food for thought about why Iraqi oil and Iranian oil supplies are soooo important to certain members of the US government, no? (although, given the "realism" of the oil reserves figures, I also have to wonder if they are also chasing a myth of huge oil fields....)
One last thing: Soon the refineries will switch from Winter production to Summer production. Last year the price of refined gas jumped to $3.00+/gallon. I wonder how high it will jump this year?
thank you for reading
jeff