The Oil Drum | And Saudi Arabia had an answer . . .

91 comments on And Saudi Arabia had an answer . . .

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BioDiesel on February 9, 2006 - 2:49am

Saudi Aramco said oil began flowing Wednesday through a gas/oil separation plant at the southern end of Ghawar, the world's biggest oil field, just 21 months after approval of funding and ahead of schedule.

Well this certainly counters the argument that ANWR will take 10 years to set-up shop and pump oil. Although ANWR is out in the middle of BFE (hey add it to the acro list) and may take a little longer than 21 months, 10 years is downright propaganda.

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Sunlight on February 9, 2006 - 3:58am

Hmmm. As Simmons says in "Twilight," when a field is first discovered, there is a great deal of work to be done: exploration wells, seismic work to delineate the extent of the field and estimate its productivity, and lots of other work before the drilling of production wells. The Saudis have had nearly 60 years of familiarity with Ghawar and its environs; presumably all these preliminaries had been long accomplished before ordering the final 21-month project that will put Haradh onstream.

Doesn't sound like ANY of this preliminary work has been accomplished at ANWR -- let alone the building of roads, pipelines, and whatever other infrastructure needed up there. Bottom line: I'm not qualified to say how many years it will take to get oil flowing to market from ANWR, but I'll bet it's significantly more time than 21 months. What say you, HO?

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plucky underdog on February 9, 2006 - 7:58pm

Ten years sounds a bit high but basically believable for ANWR. Aramco can move a lot faster because it's basically an agent of a sovereign state acting in its own territory. So none of that messy applying for permits for every little increment of the program. Plus the Saudi Eastern Province is easily accessible year-round, whereas in ANWR you're operating in a swamp in the summer and in a pitch-black Arctic hell in winter. Plus the ANWR coastal plain is a lot more environmentally complex than the Arabian desert, and contrary to what you may have heard, most oil companies DO take the time and effort to keep damage to a minimum; it's better for business in the long run.

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Heading Out on February 9, 2006 - 10:38am

I believe this is one of those cases where someone is rather tightly defining the meaning of words. From hydrocarbons technology comes this pair of paragraphs.

The Haradh Natural Gas and Oil Development lies 280km southwest of operator Saudi Aramco's headquarters in Dhahran. The work, which began in December 2000, consists of a gas plant capable of delivering 1.5 billion ft³/day of sales gas to Saudi Arabia's Master Gas System and a state-of-the-art gas oil separation plant (GOSP) capable of stabilising 300,000 barrels per day (bpd) of Arabian Light crude oil.
The GOSP associated with the Haradh - called GOSP2 - also includes a 130 million ft³ associated gas gathering facility. In addition to the sales gas, Haradh Gas Plant has a design capacity to deliver 170,000bpd of condensate to Saudi Aramco's Abqaiq processing facility.

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peakearl on February 9, 2006 - 12:35pm

My understanding is that it is the Feds themselves who say 10 years. Once drilling is authorized, they need to survey the area, divide it into blocks, get bids from various companies, award these blocks, and only then do the companies get to plan and then start developing the infrastructure, do their own seismic anayses, then plan and start their drilling programs.

Lots of work.

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Gets IT on February 9, 2006 - 3:30pm

Depends on a lot of things. Especially what the scope of the 10 year timeframe includes and if it must be developed incrementally. The plan could be incremental, such as with the first 2 years drilling, building an oil supply terminal, 2 to 5 years only producing oil while reinjecting gas, then the last 3 years for building the Alaska Gas Pipeline, that makes pretty close to 10 to full development of the field.

A full scale development plan must consider the optimum well completion rate, the expected optimum gas/oil flow per well, the optimum total flow from the field over the fields expected lifetime, when enough production will be available to justify beginning some temporary transportation operations out of the area, when enough production will be available to fill an economicly viable liquid pipeline, same for a gas pipeline. What the optimum pipeline economic diameters should be, given the many possible production rates from the beginning to the end of a field's lifetime and the pipeline ROI. I.E. it would not be practical to get 100 rigs up there and drill all the wells in 1 year, then flow at both maximum gas and oil production rates for 2 years while using very large diameter pipelines and high pump/compression power installations, and then flow at 10% pipeline capactiy for the remainder of the field's life. Optimum rates for net oil produced from a field can vary significantly over the field's lifetime, especially when it is far from the market and the transportation infrastructure is nonexistant. If this field was closer to market and 100% development did not include gas or depend on building the Alaska Gas Pipeline, it could undoubtedly provide a good oil only stream rate within 3-6 years.

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