Dating Google Earth Imagery
[Edit 03/25/2009: The current version of GE simplifies the task of dating images. When you zoom into an area, the photograph date is displayed at the bottom of the window. In addition, there is a...
View ArticleHow Many Wells in Ghawar?
Provided that one can distinguish between oil and gas wells, one thing to do is to find them all and document where they are. Google Earth makes this easy, as you can add a placemark at a precise...
View ArticleDrilling Ghawar in the 21st Century
Ghawar has been churning out oil for over 50 years, and even this massive resource is finite; it has been depleting since day one. As the oil in the reservoir is replaced by injected water from the...
View ArticleSatellite Sleuthing Gone Bad
A recent investors report was produced by Neil McMahon and Ben Dell of Bernstein Research entitled "Bernstein Energy: Saudi and Ghawar from Space! Using proprietary satellite data to test the...
View ArticleWater Under the Gas Cap in Ain Dar
By using oil well locations and approximate ages identified using Google Earth, geo-referenced well spacing maps, and several SPE publications, a more complete picture of the status of the 'Ain Dar...
View ArticleFinding Haradh III
Haradh is the southernmost operational area of the Ghawar oil field, and Increment III represents the development of the bottom third of the area. This project was completed and production brought...
View ArticleKhurais Me A River
Khurais. It is the best of fields. It is the worst of fields. It is another chip off the old block, destined to prolong Saudi Arabia's dominance as an oil producer. It is a chink in the armor of the...
View ArticleHappenings in Harmaliyah
I have seen the future of Saudi Arabian oil production, and it is Harmaliyah. No, really. Sure, there are a couple more good doses of oil to be had from Khurais and Manifa -- and perhaps a bit more...
View ArticleGhawar Numerology: Drilling Uthmaniyah
Now showing: a movie on the drilling of Uthmaniyah. Using a set of wells in a productive (but now rather depleted) slice of this part of the Saudi oil field of Ghawar, it is possible to deduce to...
View ArticleGhawar Is Not Sinking: Bernstein Again
Analysts Neil McMahon and Ben Dell from Bernstein Research are back with more analysis. When we last heard from them, they were looking for Haradh in all the wrong places and reporting on the...
View ArticleAbqaiq and Eat It Too
Abqaiq, an aging super giant Saudi Arabian oil field, has yielded over 11 billion barrels of oil since it was discovered in November of 1940. Its past provides us with the poster child for easy oil....
View ArticleHouse In The Country
This post is somewhat of a change from the usual pondering about what is going on in Saudi Arabia (see the topic list at left), but it is every bit as intriquing. The Google Earth team occasionally...
View ArticleGhawar In Focus
With today's update to the Google Earth imagery, most of Ghawar is finally covered at high resolution. Shown at left below if how Ghawar looked for most of the last couple of years, and right shows the...
View ArticleNew Setback at Khursaniyah: Drilling Mud Discovered To Be Blue Jello
In a shocking turn of events, Saudi Aramco engineers belatedly discovered -- to their horror -- that they had mistakely been using blue Jello-brand gelatin instead of drilling mud to drill several...
View ArticleTracks in the Sand
A bit over a year ago, Saudi Aramco announced two oil discoveries near the Ghawar oil field. From their 2007 Annual Review:The first, Mabruk, struck on April 26, is the first discovery in the Hadriyah...
View ArticleNorth Ghawar Updated
Using the updated Google Earth view (and DigitalGlobe imagery) for Ghawar which includes the Shedgum area, here is an update of the comparison of where older (before 2000) and later wells have been...
View ArticleIEA WEO 2008 - Fuzzy Focus on Saudi Arabia
[cross posted from The Oil Drum]Given the central role Saudi Arabia will play in the world's energy future, the continued fuzziness regarding its oil prospects is cause for concern. According to the...
View ArticleFive Easy Leases: Ghawar's Discovery Wells
A few months back, Saudi Aramco commissioned a story about the first wells in the Ghawar oil field in Saudi Arabia, the world's largest. With the title "Ghawar's Magnificent Five", it was published...
View ArticleKhurais Starts Up
Something of interest from the announcement that the Khurais project has started pumping: - The project involved drilling 420 wells and building four oil processing facilities and two more for gas....
View ArticleSaudi Aramco Loses Count, Drills Too Many Wells In Ghawar
The Haradh III development at the southern tip of the Ghawar oil field in Saudi Arabia, completed in 2006, has been portrayed by the national oil company Saudi Aramco as the turning point in the battle...
View ArticleCrude Confessions: Massive Saudi Spill in 1993?
A mishap during the loading of an oil tanker off Saudi Arabia in 1993 initiated a cascading disaster, resulting in what was the largest offshore oil spill ever, but the oil was mostly recovered by...
View ArticleMuch Ado About a Wikileak
It seems some Saudi diplomatic missives have turned up in the trove of documents that is Wikileaks, and there are claims that Sadad al-Husseini, a former Vice President of Saudi Aramco, was heard...
View ArticleFrom Qurayyah to Khurais: Turning Water Into Oil
Synopsis: A poignant little film about someone taking a lot of precious seawater, piping it miles into a parched desert, and forcing it into the ground. Oh, and then poking a bunch of holes in said...
View ArticleOf Milk Cows and Saudi Arabia
Under the desert in eastern Saudi Arabia lies Ghawar, the largest oil field in the world. It has been famously productive, with a per-well flow rate of thousands of barrels per day, owing to a...
View Article
