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One thing that's interesting when looking at the Saudi Discoveries plot is that of all the fields discovered since 1970 or so, they chose to develop the Hawtah fields -- and they have proved to be problematic. And they didn't stumble across them, either. They looked real hard, and then were very excited (and boastful) when they found them. Why develop those, and not the others (especially those which are larger)? The super light API oil? I don't think that they were inspired by JFK* and did it just "because it was hard". Rather, the others were less attractive for some reason. Go after the easy oil first, and wait for later technology improvements to make getting the harder oil out less costly.
*from his Moon Speech
I suppose the Hawtah fields, at the bottom left of the chart below, were the easiest to develop compared to the other discoveries made since about 1970. Many of the other discovered fields in the 1970s appear to be located in the upper left corner of the chart below. These fields might also contain heavier oil and lack infrastructure.
click to enlarge