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Ghawar Field
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Ghawar | |
| Country: | Saudi Arabia |
|---|---|
| Coordinates: | |
| Offshore/Onshore: | Onshore |
| Operators: | Saudi Aramco |
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| Field History | |
| Discovery: | 1948 |
| Start of production: | 1951 |
| Peak of production: | 2005 (contested) |
| Production | |
| Current Production Oil (Bod): | 5 MMbbl/d |
| Producing Formations: | Upper/Middle Jurassic, Upper/Lower Permian, Lower Devonian |
Ghawar is an oil field in Saudi Arabia. It is located about 100 km WSW from the city of Dhahran in Al-Ahsa county of the Eastern Province. Measuring 280 km by 30 km, it is by far the largest conventional oil field in the world.[1] 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.
Contents |
Ghawar occupies an anticline above a basement fault block dating to Carboniferous time, about 320 million years ago; Cretaceous tectonic activity, as the northeast margin of Africa began to impinge on southwest Asia, enhanced the structure. Reservoir rocks are Jurassic Arab-D limestones with exceptional porosity (as much as 35% of the rock in places), sourced from the Jurassic Hanifa formation, a marine shelf deposit of mud and lime with as much as 5% organic material (1% to 2% is considered good oil source rock). The seal is an evaporitic package of rocks including impermeable anhydrite.
Historically Ghawar has been subdivided into five production areas, from north to south, 'Ain Dar and Shedgum, 'Uthmaniyah, Hawiyah and Haradh. The major oasis of Al-Ahsa and the city of Al-Hofuf are located on Ghawar's east flank, corresponding to the 'Uthmaniyah production area. Ghawar was discovered in 1948 and put on stream in 1951.[2][3]Some sources claim Ghawar peaked in 2005, though this is strongly contested by the field operators.[4][5]
Approximately 60-65% of all Saudi oil produced between 1948 and 2000 came from Ghawar. Cumulative production to the end of 2005 was about 60 billion barrels.[6] Currently, Ghawar is estimated to produce over 5 million barrels (800,000 m³) of oil a day (6.25% of global production).
Ghawar also produces approximately 2 billion cubic feet (56 633 693 m³) of natural gas per day.
Saudi Aramco has stated that it has more than 71 billion barrels of proven reserves remaining. Some people, such as Matthew Simmons in his book Twilight in the Desert, suggest that production from the Ghawar field and Saudi Arabia, may soon peak. However, Simmons' work has been strongly criticised by Saudi Aramco officials such as Nansen Saleri.
When appraised in the 1970s, the field was assessed to have 170 billion barrels of original oil in place, with about 60 billion barrels recoverable (1975 Aramaco estimate quoted by Matt Simmons). The second figure, at least, was understated, since that production figure has already been exceeded.
- ^ http://www.aapg.org/explorer/2005/01jan/ghawar.cfm
- ^ The Elephant of All Elephants (English). AAPG.
- ^ Glenn Morton. "Trouble in the World's Largest Oil Field-Ghawar", Energy Bulletin, 2004-07-24. (English)
- ^ Donald Coxe. "Has Ghawar truly peaked?", 2005-03-31. (English)
- ^ Porter, Adam. "Bank says Saudi's top field in decline", English Al-Jazeera, April 12 2005. Retrieved on September 5.
- ^ based on Croft
- Simmons, Matthew. Twilight in the Desert: The coming Saudi oil shock and the world economy. 2005 ISBN 0-471-73876-X
- Saudi Arabian Oil Fields Brimming. SAUDI-US RELATIONS INFORMATION SERVICE. Retrieved on October 2, 2005.
- The Ghawar Oil Field, Saudi Arabia. Greg Croft Inc. Retrieved on March 11, 2006.
- A theoretical look at the future of the field
- "The Oil Drum" articles on Ghawar and analysis on its reserves
- Terrorists and Ghawar
- Saudi Aramco website (source of most data in this article).