Ethane is used in LPG (liquified petroleum gas) in varying proportions together with propane.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquified_petroleum_gas

LPG drives many taxis in Australia. It is liquid under pressure and ambient temperature and therefore requires a special tank which is fitted in the boot

i think you are refering to condensate (c6+). which is more or less stable at stock tank conditions. lpg (primarily propane) is stored in a pressurized vessel. ngl refers to the whole range of intermediate components (c2 - c6) which can be liquified by cooling and are components of gasoline and chemical feedstocks. lng is liquified methane.
and with all of these designations, it is important to remember that they arent a pure single component. condensate will contain a small fraction of methane for example.

Your right. All we need is for Robert to be convinced and I think we have consensus of the top TOD researchers/analysts. I don't think Robert will do this until it is well after the fact and obvious to all.

Where has this resting of wells been practiced?

Hello Euan and Ace,

The Voelker PDF goes into great detail on qualifying backflow, DFN coning, and zonal thieving problems encountered during shut-in/resting periods, but unfortunately doesn't give us any quantifying detail on the areal extent of these DFNs/per Ghawar subfield. A glimpse is only provided on page 66, frame 96:
---------------------------------------------------
A specific example[51] which has implications on the geometry of the thin, permeable facies associated with super-k, is that of an Uthmaniyah well which backflowed
over 1000 B/D upon shut-in, into a thin interval located at the top of Zone 2A, a common stratigraphic location of super-k intervals (5.4.2).
-------------------------------------------------

The best waterfront glimpse is provided for UTMN circa [2000-01] in the MORABT map page 76, frame 106. Sure would be nice to have this for the entirety of Ghawar to see how much would be green area in 2007.

Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?

Hi Euan,

Thnaks for that suggestion, I will break Ghawar into sub fields for forecasting in my model.

In your base model forecast you show both North and South Ain Dar having no forecast production in 2013. Do you think that North and South Ain Dar will be abandoned completely or will they continue producing some kind of hydrocarbons (oil, NGL, gas)?

Euan,

If you do a x-y propostional scale to the western bit, then put it next to the eastern, you can then compare with the other cross section we have and determine:

a) that they are of different spots along Uthmaniyah, since the morphology is different.

b) that there is a general change in thickness across the cross section with is not unimportant when calculating reserves etc.

(units here are arbitrary)

c) the changing height of the OWC west to east, and north to south is also important.

250ft thick reservoir I think means zones 2 & 3, but its fairly clear than the OOIP only goes to ~190 feet, which ties in with the croft figure of 180ft average over the whole reservoir.

As regards Shedgum, don't forget the effect of the Shedgum leak area on the recoverable oil in the north of Shedgum. As we discusses if fig 9 is in the far south of Shedgum then there could be a distinct difference between North and South. In particular Fig 14 with the blue and green spots all over areas of Shedgum wells calls much into question.

Kilograms of corn, wheat, soybeans, beef, pork, chicken, etc....
The Middle East is going to need our food exports as much as we are going to need their oil exports!

Judging by what he has written, I would say his question is more how is Saudi able to maintain production even at present rates if Ghawar is in greater decline than he has illustrated. It is a great question

Would a 400,000bpd secret infusion from a nearby country help in that effort?

Occam's razor. Since the production actually is declining, and the only point of argument is whether it's voluntary or involuntary, the simplest and most conservative explanation is that the Saudis have no choice in the matter.

IPSA. Larceny on such a grand scale as to be almost unimaginable. Bush & Co. get their cut which goes into their own pockets. Saudi's sell as their own. US gets continued supply(but not the ill gotten gains). US taxpayer pays for it all.

Anyone in the oil business knows the ultimate outcome of a bottom water drive in a world class reservoir... natural or induced. It is not a pretty thing.

FF,

See my comment below that I started hammering on, after reading Matt Simmons' book and after reading the first article in the WSJ on Cantarell.

In both fields we had rapidly thinning oil columns between rising water legs and gas caps (primary in Cantarell, secondary at Ghawar), in reservoirs where the permeability to water and gas is much higher than the permeability to oil.

The simultaneous decline/crash of the two largest producing oil fields in the world--which at least until recently accounted for 10% of world crude oil production--can only be described as a catastrophe.

I also repeatedly stated that the East Texas Oil Field--1.2 mbpd of water with a 1% oil cut--is now where all of these super giant water drive fields are headed.

Anyone in the oil business knows the ultimate outcome of a bottom water drive in a world class reservoir... natural or induced. It is not a pretty thing.

Since I'm not in the oil business, could you elaborate?

Exactly, Euan! KSA has done a remarkable job balancing the tightrope between acting as swing producer and keeping Ghawar healthy. But in having done so, at least for North Ghawar, we are seeing the end in sight after 70 years (an astonishingly long time for a field to produce at these rates!!).

Your scenarios call for basically a loss of 3 mbpd production from Ghawar overall over the next several years (5-10 depending on base case or high case). This is exactly what I was talking about when I said that KSA's days as swing producer are probably about over.

Yes, KSA could have produced 15 mbpd but they thankfully did not and consequently have managed to keep North Ghawar alive this long. And they certainly could not produce that 15 mbpd now.

One thing we can count on is a 3 mbpd drop, from Ghawar alone, over the next 5-10 years. How many small fields is it going to take to replace that? How many "giants"? Replacing the production from the granddaddy of all supergiant fields is not going to be a trivial task. The peaking of Ghawar is going to be the most noticeable event as we cross through peak into global decline.

Thanks for the update, Euan! People also need to consider that Euan is the "optimistic" voice amongst the TOD team. I am sure that Stuart's assessment will be gloomier. The only question is how much so?

Ghawar Is Dying
The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function. - Dr. Albert Bartlett

Right, silly me, I failed to notice that, in the charts.
That single fact addresses most of the problems I presented.

Still, some other problems remain:
1.
Do you “feel” (I know there is no public available data on that) that the (present) reduced overall production of S. Arabia allows for 5Mb/d from Ghawar? Do you believe that the 1Mb/d reduction in production from the last 8-9-10 months was totally the result of “resting” other fields (and leaving Ghawar at its “standard” plateau)?
2.
Based on table 4 and in the High Case production model, and considering only N Ain Dar, do you believe that a flat 0.5 Mb/d can be maintained for 4 more years, while depletion goes from the present 90% to 95%? Do you think that would be achievable within a reasonable investment in new water treatment facilities?
(We all have read about the new 12 Mb/d facility that is being contracted. That will only be ready near the end of those 4 years and, in any case, its scale does not seem enough for this job. Do you think simple upgrading of the present facilities will do the job during the next few years?)
3.
Finally, do you expect the Saudis to spend all that money to keep the Ghawar plateau production flat for 4 more years (leading to a very fast decline afterwards)?
Would it not be much more reasonable to dispense with that enormous effort (and cost) and to accept an earlier decline at more benign rates?
(I think the second is the obvious “natural” choice and, besides much reduced investment costs, it would mean a fatter production tail at a moment when oil prices can be expected to be at higher levels…)

No. The chief culprit is exponential growth. Exponential growth in oil consumption dwarfs even a supergiant field like Ghawar.

In the period from 1950 to 1960, the world consumed more oil than in all its previous history up to 1950. In the period from 1960 to 1970, the world consumed more oil than in all previous history up to 1960. In mathematics, every doubling is more than the sum of all previous doublings. Global consumption has just about doubled again since 1970 but this time it thankfully took almost 40 years rather than 10 but the growth is continuing and it must stop.

Ghawar Is Dying
The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function. - Dr. Albert Bartlett

I can't speak about oil, but I can see a very general reason for what I call convergence: once one resource begins to deplete, it accelerates the depletion of associated resources -- those used in its production, those that can substitute for it. Certainly the downslope of oil will drastically affect water supplies, some metals, certainly all energy substitutes, now food via soil, etc.

Actaully even I can give one brain-dead oil example -- certainly the depeletion curve in the US has had a major affect on the curves of other regions. But that's not an answer to your particular question.

Since OPEC's rules allow a country to produce in proportion to its reserves, wouldn't that also cause them to hit peak about the same time? That is, they're all producing the same fixed percentage of their reserves each year, so it seems like they'd run into depletion issues around the same time as well.

Hi D,

re: "...it may have been planned." My impression, which others here have the expertise to comment upon, is that actually, the management of extraction has differed quite a bit, WRT quality of same. So, this is perhaps - to some degree - a coincidence, avoidable at one time. (But, too late now.)

Hello Rainsong,

From the Bloomberg text: "Saudi Arabia can pump 10.8 million barrels a day now, according to Bloomberg estimates. It produced 8.5 million barrels a day in March and could have pumped 2.3 million more barrels a day. That spare capacity typically would be used to fill gaps in supply caused by disruptions in oil-producing regions."

It sure would be nice if they gave us Aramco links so we could verify this to our own satisfaction. Why should we just take their 'estimates' as verbatim truth?

Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?

An interesting article.

Weasel words.

I'm waiting for them to announce they are comfortable with 70bbl oil and won't be raising production.

These dudes are just lying. The Oildrum analysis is correct.
They would not say this bs spin stuff if they were not in trouble last time alternatives took off they buried the market.

First the claimed they where happy with 60.

Then they would not increase it since no one could convince them of demand even though India and China and large parts of the world are growing explosively with high prices and high demand ?

Next they are now claiming alternatives will cut demand.

The only thing we cannot get out of KSA is oil and the truth.

Rainsong - we have this map from IPTC 10395 and my guess at where it may be located in relation to the remaining oil from the Linux map. Typically, the colour coding on the SPE / IPTC papers, yellow denotes an oil-full reservoir. So my take on this is that all areas up-dip form this lobe will be oil full - oil floats on water after all.

Greg Croft quotes 11% Swi (initial water saturation) as the avearge in all Ghawars sub regions. Swi is linked to reservoir quality and as there are large variations in resevoir quality across the structure we are generally agreed that Swi must also vary and this aspect of Croft's data is suspect. I used an Swi value of 5% for Shedgum.

huh?
water droplets have nothing to do with the determination of oil fvf. water has it's own fvf.

Hello Euan,

Do we have any Ghawar subfield numbers on the installation period, location, pumping time, and quantity of these short radius horizontal [SRH] offshoots near the top of the Arab zone [fig. 13 in link below]?

http://freeoil.1111mb.com/spe/spe93439.pdf

What prompted this Aramco decision to exhaust the crude early from the highest perm/porosity layer? Sure, it reduced watercuts cheaply, but doesn't that make it even harder to ramp up extra production in the future?

In short, I don't see the logic of purposely encouraging waterfront override and future zonal thieving over the lower layers of lower perm/porosity payrock.

Alternative explanation? -- unless these SRHs were topcrest located and gas re-injection was used to displace the oil and keep the water out?

EDIT: Tertiary oil recovery by building a gascap--> how much, how long has this been going on, and can this only be done at the topcrests, or can it be extended downdip quite a ways in a single layer? Thxs for any reply.

Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?