Lifting and Stripping Saudi Arabia

MD · Last edited by MD on Thu May 03, 2007 9:22 pm; edited 1 time in total

As I was driving east on Interstate 70 today (pointed towards Pennsylvania from Ohio); I passed a flatbed semi-trailer hauling half a dozen refurbished oil-lift pumps.

This caused me to wonder about the lifting capacity of Saudi Arabia post-peak.

Looking at the North American experience we find:

"The United States has 393,000 oil stripper wells and 260,000 natural gas stripper wells, and they are typically operated by small, independent companies in fields that are long past their peaks. The definition applies to oil wells delivering no more than 10 barrels per day and gas wells delivering no more than 60,000 cubic feet per day. "

and:

"But without the stripper wells' aggregate production, the United States would have to import an additional 860,000 barrels of oil a day (an increase of seven percent), and 1.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas (an increase of 38 percent)."

With all the discussion regarding Ghawar recently, and the readily apparent conclusion that Saudi Arabia has met the depletion treadmill, it's time to turn the discussion to lifting capacity.

Questions for the PO geeks to answer promptly please:

Which formations are given to lifting capacity?
What rates can be expected?
Are they lifting any oil now?

{quick definition of lifting: think straw sucking a milkshake instead of a shaken bottle of soda---"stripping" gets a little more involved that that---see reference}

Finally: quote reference link
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MD

As a side note: I wonder where those refurbished pumps were headed?

Pennsylvannia oil fields?

-or-

East coast ports, to be delivered where?
_________________
"It's still all about energy!"

Schultz: I see NOTHING! I know NOTHING!

md@peakoil.com

Tanada

Technically water injection is artificial lift. The question I have been wondering for over two years is, when they switch to mechanical pumps how much difference will it make? I know that water injection is simple compared to artificial pumping, and can run at a high rate. The problem stems from the fact that you have to depressure a field to use lift pumps, and that causes a gas cap to form if it doesn't already exist. KSA gets most of their domestic energy minus vehical fuel from the associated gas. Once they switch to using the gas caps they will be looking at only a decade or so more natural gas extraction and will have a serious problem down the road unless they switch to using oil for domestic electricity production. If they do switch to oil that puts an even greater reduction on exports.
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Always appeal to a man's enlightened self interest, you can trust him to look out for himself honestly, It's when you appeal to his Honor or the Common Good that he stops paying attention.

MD

It was my understanding that much of the stripping effort is centered around bypassed oil pockets that have been "washed around". Once injected pressure no longer yields sufficient production you can go back and pick away at bypassed areas with stripping methods.

I don't recall this topic being addressed in depth recently. I'm hoping the resident professionals will pipe in with some free lessons. Especially with regard to SA formations.
_________________
"It's still all about energy!"

Schultz: I see NOTHING! I know NOTHING!

md@peakoil.com