Every last acre of Ghawar is covered in one or more 2006-2007 images from DigitalGlobe, the best out there. I'm convinced that someone is paying DG to take these shots. Why some of them are not being used (2006 Shedgum and Haradh images) is beyond me. A 2006 high-res shot of a small, isolated, but interesting (from an oil standpoint) area of Uthmaniyah was suddenly included a year after it was taken. There is also a 2007 DG image covering an area just south of there that I would like to have.

I would imagine that Google Earth has license to all of DigitalGlobe existing imagery such that they don't pay by the piece. If an image exists (e.g., someone paid for the photoshoot), the bottleneck is GE taking the time to correct for azimuth skew and put it in the right location. I don't think the decision to do that for a particular area is random, either.

Stuart's model for depletion assumed that the Arab-D reservoir is being depleted evenly from the bottom up. Thus, the higher spots would be the last to go. However, especially for Shedgum, this is not always the case. The remaining oil in Shedgum is to the west of the crest and on over to 'Ain Dar. A figure from Stuart's presentation at ASPO shows that, and I will do a post on Shedgum before too long. Perhaps GE will bless me with an update first.

Stuart's western "high" spot for Shedgum is in a high-res coverage area, but in a small strip dating to 2003 and there are maybe a couple of new wells evident then. Using a low-res 2006 image as an overlay, I can tentatively find about 9 more. There are also a couple of new wells on the west side of the "dead" zone, but it's otherwise rather quiet over there.