the presentation made by head of Aramco. There are some interesting slides in there and if you try to find any glaring conflicts in the data presented and their overall conclusions it is difficult....certainly none were readily apparent to me. Of course I am ignoring the possibility that they are outright lying about their production rates, which is of course possible. The analysis on A'in Dur and Shadgun is interesting. This is an old field that makes up part of the greater Ghawar trend. Although there is a wee bit of smoke and mirrors here (ie. if they have voidage replacement with the water drive the pressure would stay more or less constant and not decline) I have to conclude that if they have kept oil production constant at 2 MB/day for the length of time shown and have already recovered 60% of the proven reserves I find it hard not to believe that 75% recovery is achievable (ie. if it were much less the field should be going into decline now or the water production should have ramped up steadily). The curves they show suggest to me they are producing under constant drawdown and likely at less than 10% takeoff of remaining URR. Also that the water flood is merely serving to keep the oil column pressurized...there being no bypassing going on to speak of. Of course one of the brighter reservoir engineers can step in and correct my analysis.
So I guess I am led to believe that if Aramco is not lying about the fluid production rates for A'in Dur and Shadgun there are only two possibilities....they are going to see a very high recovery rate or instead A'in Dur and Shadgun are draining other parts of the Ghawar mulitplex of fields.
Anyways an interesting presentation to look at and consider in light of Simmons views.
Of course someone will jump in and say "of course you can't believe the Saudis" but going to the trouble of cooking production data like this unless they really had taken everything into consideration has as big a risk of showing them to be fibbing as telling the truth.
There are a couple of interesting links in this thread.
You can probably tell us better, but the number 65% recoverable seems to stick in my mind as typical yield from an oil field, but this must be dependent on the source rock.
75% must be unusual, if that is the case, Ghawar is even more of a miracle.
I would still be interested in seeing a recalculation of the original URR given the approximate dimensions of the field, and an understanding about the porosity and hydrocarbon content of the source rock.
thanks for the link pup55. Unfortunately not a lot of additional information there that can help us. The suggestion of trying to estimate OOIP is worthwhile but the methodology suggested there is incorrect. Using the method that poster described would require an additional shape factor applied otherwise your estimate would be too high. I may have a go at running a Monte Carlo but there are so many unknowns such as porosity distribution and net reservoir thickness that I think the P10-P90 range will be fairly large.
As you point out the 75% recovery factor the Saudis are anticipating is extremely high and very unusual. Rule of thumb on average round the world secondary recovery yields about 30% recovery factor. That being said there are a number of fields with very high recovery factors. What is required is:
1. strong water drive - which in Saudi would be provided by the injection scheme
2. high porosity - the Arab D does have high porosity but it can be variable
3. very low oil viscosity - no idea what viscosity of Ghawar is.
4. low connate water saturation - again nothing published I am aware of
5. uniform permeability - unlikely in the Arab D as it is a carbonate reservoir.
My best guess here is that A'in Dur and Shedgun are sucking oil from other parts of Ghawar (ie. barriers have broken down under drawdown and water flood sweep) so that overall recovery in all of the Ghawar fields will be much less than 75%.
But again a reservoir engineer would probably know more.
I have never seen a field recover 75% but then I have not been everywhere. However this is not a number you will find frequently in the oil industry unless it is a gov. run lab experiment.
The rise in pressure seems to coinside with the rise in water cut. This implies water flooding. Horizontal wells could delay high water cuts but this will not happen forever. Would be nice to see the next 3 years.
So as a reservoir engineer I do not see enogh information here to buy the story that they have figured out the "perfect" way to avoid premature break through and achieve recovery rates of 75%.
Regarding lying. They can always say they made a mistake. Without access to their field data ( I am sure it would fit on a CD ) we can only speculate.
Reservoirs are not sand boxes or made up of sugar cubes _________________ Men argue, nature acts !
Voltaire
"...In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation."
Based on everything you have read/heard regarding Saudi Arabia, consiering the very public difference of opinion between Optimist Lynch and pessimist Simmons, where do you stand?
Also, where do you stand on peak oil in general? Do you agree with ASPO for PO in 2007? PFC Energy 2012? or IEA sometime after 2025?
The rise in pressure seems to coinside with the rise in water cut. This implies water flooding. Horizontal wells could delay high water cuts but this will not happen forever. Would be nice to see the next 3 years
.
Yup that's what I thought regarding pressure. And I forgot all about the fact that a lot of the wells are now horizontal. Just an explaination to the non-oil and gas technical folks: with horizontal wells you can produce with larger standoff (ie: distance from perforations and the water leg) and lower overall drawdown (differential pressure drop). As a consequence as Shakespeare points out you can hold off water production for sometime but once the bottom water has risen to a depth at where the current pressure drawn down would allow for coning then all bets are off. It would be interesting to know what the apparent mobility ratio of oil to water is here as well.
I really enjoy these kind of puzzles....just not sure I will like the answer!
Well I tend to be in the camp of "show me" that you have what you say you have camp. Reservoir analysis requires data and they have it and I do not.
Fields that start to water out will continue to water out. You may delay it some but that is the first sign of the end. The presentation that was provided through the posted link looks to me more PR than reservoir engineering. It was not aimed at an engineer. Knowing how businesses operate I am of the opinion that I want to see the raw data. Not a managers presentation. Better yet, I want to go to the field and look. Fat chance.
Since our economies depend on what the Saudies produce and they profit from it they have a responsibility as "honest" business people to show us their cards. But this is not a perrfect world. For economic AND political resasons I do not see them opening up unless there is a "gun" pointed at them. Fat chance of that though. But seeing the US gov. taking the risky move to park itself in Iraq signals to me that it see upcoming problems with OIL PRODUCTION.
ARAMCO is a Saudie/US company. I am sure that that data that fits in a CD and tells everything is in US gov. hands. It is called commercial spying. It is not hard to get at as any reservoir engineer working on fields or simulating them would have it and would need it. That data tells it all.
My gut feeling is we are there or neearing it. Here again I have to go with what I have seen and what Campbell and Laherre have done.
King Hubbard was a genius. _________________ Men argue, nature acts !
Voltaire
"...In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation."
Your thought that the U.S. already has the Saudi data is something I suspect as well, and here's why:
A big issue is who in the administration leaked Valerie Plame as a CIA operative. What is interesting to me, is the fact that Plame was apparently operating a CIA fronted business intended to inflitrate the Saudi oil industry. From what was reported about Plame and her company, the CIA operation was long in the making and apparently very successful, and ultimately infiltrated numerous energy sectors in the ME and possibly elswhere. Its been awhile since I've read these articles. I will try to google them and post links later.
So, assuming the above is all true, why would the Admin leak and divulge this critical operation? We'll, the sole purpose of the leak may have been politically motivated, but I don't think the admin (full of oilmen) is that stupid. Rather, its more believable to me that they had the info they needed and if it was leaked, they didn't fear losing the operation. So, they could safely leak the info for their own political purposes.
If the U.S. had already gathered the data they needed, as suspected by you, through Plame's operation, this would make some sense. Just speculation, but in this big puzzle, with the leak of Plame, Simmons book, SA reportedly "repatriating" their assets, etc., it seems that the information is known and that it is not promising.
I think I mentioned on another thread that I have several friends who have worked and/or are still working for Aramco having started there in the late eighties. About 1995 or so most of the expats involved in looking at the various projects were taken off of the oil projects and put on the gas initiative. This was a highly successful project for Aramco they claim to have found 94 TCF during the last 10 years. But I wonder if this was also their way of keeping a tighter rein on the data.
But as to US ownership this from Aramco's site:
Quote:
The story of the Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Saudi Aramco) dates back more than 66 years, to 4 Safar 1352H. corresponding to 29 May 1933 i.e. less than one year after proclaiming unification of the Kingdom under the late King 'Abd al-'Aziz, when the government of Saudi Arabia and Standard Oil of California (SOCAL then, Chevron now) signed the basic concessionary agreement to explore for oil in the Kingdom.
SOCAL transferred the concession to one of its affiliate companies, California Arabian Standard Oil (ASOC). In 1936, Texas Company (now Texaco), owned half of ASOC, and on 1944, ASOC changed its name to the Arabian American Oil Company (Aramco).
In 1948, two other major American oil companies, Standard Oil of New Jersey (Now Exxon) and Socony Vacuum (now Mobil) acquired shares in Aramco. Each of SOCAL, Standard Oil of New Jersey and Texaco acquired 30% share and Socony Vacuum acquired 10% share. Between 1957 and 1979, Mobil increased its share to 15% while the other companies' share were decreased proportionately.
In 1973, the Saudi Government acquired a 25% of partner's share in Aramco that soon increased to 60% a year later. In 1980, the Government retroactively gained full ownership of Aramco with financial effect as of 1976, after the government paid the value of Aramco assets.
In Rabi' II 1409 (November 1988), the Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Saudi Aramco) was established by a Royal Decree to assume Aramco's administrative and operational functions.
so I guess the bottom line here would be that the US companies would have had access only to the pre-eighties data. All of the interesting stuff has probably happened since then, though it would be interesting to look at the old data as well.
Joined: Jan 04, 2005 Posts: 623 Location: Australia
Posted: Thu Aug 11, 2005 3:04 am Post subject: Re: Saudi production - trying to piece together the various
Some more here from Dr. Sadad Al-Husseini, recently retired vice president of Saudi Aramco. He was the guy who came out and said the US EIA's estimates of oil supplies a "dangerous overestimate".
Joined: Aug 26, 2005 Posts: 60 Location: Somewhere in Saudi Arabia
Posted: Mon Sep 26, 2005 10:41 am Post subject: Re: Saudi production - trying to piece together the various
...and, as previously noted, Saudi Aramco is wholely Saudi...no American owners (even though they kept the Aramco acronym). If there are reservoir engineers interested in gaining insight into Aramco's fields, then they should approach the Aramco agency in Houston. The company is looking for engineers with significant experience (not management...technical). The expat Aramco life is pretty good, particularly if you have a young family.
Joined: Nov 11, 2004 Posts: 978 Location: Heart of Canada's Oil Country
Posted: Mon Sep 26, 2005 11:28 am Post subject: Re: Saudi production - trying to piece together the various
Antimatter wrote:
Some more here from Dr. Sadad Al-Husseini, recently retired vice president of Saudi Aramco. He was the guy who came out and said the US EIA's estimates of oil supplies a "dangerous overestimate".
The supposed inability of Saudi Arabia to meet its production targets in the next few years also requires discussion. At the current depletion rate of 3 billion barrels per year, which represents 2.3 % of the remaining 130 billion barrels of proven developed reserves, this concern is debunked by simple mathematics. Utilizing existing technology and sound engineering analysis, my staff and I were confident that Aramco could sustain even higher rates of production, if necessary.
[snip]
Quote:
Based on these considerations, the Kingdom can certainly increase its production to 15 million barrels per day based on its existing reserves base.
I'm confused. How can he state that the EIA's estimates are a "dangerous overestimate" yet also say that 15mbpd is possible? _________________ Do not underestimate the difficulties of surviving the transition of peak oil, nor the dangers of global warming. We must embrace nuclear energy and renewables.
Joined: Nov 11, 2004 Posts: 978 Location: Heart of Canada's Oil Country
Posted: Mon Sep 26, 2005 12:39 pm Post subject: Re: Saudi production - trying to piece together the various
Ming wrote:
EIA and IAE's estimates go way beyond 15 Mb/d, and assume those quantities can be produced for an indefinite duration...
The EIA data I'm looking at shows:
Saudi Arabia :
8.6 (1990) 9.2 (2002) 14.0 (2010) 14.5 (2015) 15.4 (2020) 16.3 (2025)
(available in appendix E at the EIA website)
So, no, that isn't way beyond. _________________ Do not underestimate the difficulties of surviving the transition of peak oil, nor the dangers of global warming. We must embrace nuclear energy and renewables.
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