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GAIA Host Collective
Conrad, actually no, I posted the above in response to elwoodelmore's post on yesterday's Drumbeat, early this morning:
I only wished to point out, but without putting down elwoodelmore, that this was simply incorrect. Saudi has been using water injection for half a century. This is not unusual. Water injection is now in common use around the world to keep the pressure on reservoirs.
The increasing water to oil ratio indicates that the field is in decline. When Saudi starts increasing the water injection you can be sure they have a very good reason for doing so. This is all part of their effort to improve the decline rate of their giant fields from an average of 8% to 2%. And of course this will probably work....for awhile. But sooner or later that 2% will catch up with the 8%. That means that a field will likely go into catastrophic decline at some point.
One more interesting point that I just thought of. Abqaiq was the first Saudi field to receive water injection. Abqaiq is now completely watered out and Saudi is now trying to milk pockets in Abqaiq to get the very last drops of oil form her.
Ghawar was the second Saudi field to receive water injection.
Ron Patterson
yes, thank you for the clarification. the point i was trying to make was regarding the sea water volume being in addition to the produced water which (presumably) is also reinjected. is this the case?
or are we refering to salt water (produced) and sea water (make-up volume) as one and the same ? it appears from the available publications on the field that this may be the case.