Here you go, Euan:

Click on the image from a large version. The white vertical line is 10 km. The area of the enclosed area is 400 km^2. The green diamonds are rigs and the green dots are "new" wells.

As far as rigs go, here are excerpts from the Saudi Aramco 2006 Annual Report:

We have embarked upon an expanded exploration
program, designed to grow our proven reserves of oil
and natural gas both onshore and offshore. With our
greater emphasis on increasing production of natural
gas to fuel the domestic economy, our major discoveries
in 2006 were gas fields. We plan to drill more than 300
gas development wells and 230 exploration and
delineation wells by 2011. In the next 10 years, we hope
to add 50 trillion cubic feet (tcf) to our current 248.5 tcf
of gas reserves.
...
One of the central components of our expansion is our
drilling program. At a time when worldwide demand
for drilling rigs is at historic highs, we increased our
drilling rig count by 26 percent, from 90 to 113 rigs.
This total rig count comprised six exploration rigs and
75 development rigs (65 onshore and 10 offshore). In
addition, we deployed 32 workover rigs (24 onshore
and eight offshore). We drilled 368 new development
and 13 exploration wells, and performed 206 re-entries
and 136 workovers.
More than 80 percent of all wells drilled in 2006 were
horizontal wells with either single or multiple laterals.
...
Crude oil increment drilling continued throughout the
year, including the completion of 73 wells for the Haradh-
III increment, 28 of which were MRCs. Drilling for the
AFK increment continued with 54 wells. We began drilling
for three other crude oil increments in 2006: Khurais,
Shaybah and Nuayyim. The Hawiyah gas increment drilling
program was initiated, with 32 wells planned.

I suppose one could derive the rig residence time from this data.

I should mention here again my interpretation of what's happening. No certainty, but it fits the facts and it feels right to me.

In regard to Abqaiq, Ain Dar and Shedgum, what I think is happening is Aramco is progressively redeveloping the fields with MRC, and then shutting them down. We know from previous published data that with the depleted fields production from an MRC well only lasts a short time.

As they close down these fields (and eventually Uthmaniyah) they are starting up new fields elsewhere with the aim of maintaining a flat production profile out to 2018-2020. Somewhere around the 8-9 Mbpd mark. Euan has a graph that shows just this if you make certain assumptions for the reduction in supply for Ghawar. Its too perfect to be by chance.

Why do this? Well shutting in your best producing fields provides you with surge capacity, all the way up to the 12Mbpd that Aramco claims. You can start them up, and suck that sweet free flowing oil fast when you need to. It places SA where they want to be, in control of swing production.

Of course, you can't produce for long. Its not real fulltime capacity. But you just need ~100 days for it to count under the rules and it allows SA to meet their stated aims.

Thanks for adding this garyp, very good observations on MRC.

I'd contend that Euan's forecast of 240 Gb is as probable as Colin Campbell's 280 Gb. In the latter case that plateau could last even longer.

Gary,

Here's why I don't buy your MRC shut-in theory. May of the new MRC wells, in 'Ain Dar and Shedgum at least, are being put in wet areas with laterals extending down-dip--they are designed to get the oil before it gets left behind by the retreating flood front. Given that they probably aren't completely shutting in the whole field, it is still be depleted and the flood front is retreating--thus negating one of their stated aims.

If they want to throttle something back, it would make more sense to do this with Haradh III or even just stop production in problematic areas like Haradh I.

My view is they do indeed stop producing those fields, in order to shut in the last dregs of production as their 3Mbpd surge capacity.

If you take the assumption that they are not totally lying then 12Mpbd has to be possible to a certain extent. Given that we don't think they can achieve it for years at a time, this theory fits the facts. Abqaiq, Ain Dar & Shedgum are the highest quality reservoirs and are most likely to be able to be turned on to +3Mbpd levels quickly. Better to hold them back and maintain that surge producer capability much longer.

Haradh doesn't work since the reservoir quality is much lower, its capacity isn't high enough, and its needed to provide the base load.

In the end the only way to find out is to determine if the northern GOSPs etc are still working to full capacity. If not then either N Ghawar is in very sharp decline, or this 'late surge' hypothosis is in effect.

RE new Saudi gas wells and ELM.

It might make good sense for KSA to use their extensive gas reserves for domestic energy needs thus offsetting a good deal of domestic use of crude oil. This would tend to go counter to the ELM (Export Land Model) in that more crude would be available for export than would be otherwise were it not for massive NG development.

Right idea, but in the short term at least, wrong direction.

Because of shortfalls in domestic natural gas production, I am aware of a report that indicates that Saudi Arabia will have to divert 500,000 bpd of liquids production in in 2007 and 2008 to power plants and desalination plants. Because of this report, I was guessing at a 10% increase in Saudi liquids consumption in 2007. Note that Rembrandt put the first half of 2007 increase in consumption at +9% year over year.

Because of the natural gas situation, Saudi Arabia is looking into importing coal and into building nuclear power plants (and I assume that they are looking into LNG).

Thanks JB, fantastic!