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45 comments on Saudi Arabia's Ghawar Isn't Sinking (but has apparently moved)
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Hang on.
If they are using optical methods to evaluate uplift/sinking then the accuracy is insufficient (as previously mentioned). If they are using SAR then there is the small matter that the area is covered in sand dunes. On a local basis you would expect some significant changes in topography. On a regional averaged basis you would still need to see changes measured in metres to be sure the changes you saw were real uplift.
About the only way it would work is if you picked spot heights on known features (such as roads) that wouldn't change otherwise, comparing them between satellite passes.
There are still too many unanswered questions and I still think they are in the realm of junk science and extrapolating unacceptably from poor data - unless they can prove otherwise. Once you discard their uplift/sink data, is there anything left to sustain a statement that everything is AOK?
Garyp, there are many high dunes in the area but there are also many areas with no dunes. Some of it is just hardpan desert with no dunes at all. As the article states, there are irrigated wheat fields that cuts across the southern tip of Ghawar. Also, even where there are dunes, there are stable clearings among the dunes. They have a name but it escapes me at the moment. Anyway, it is in these stable clearings that the wells and gosps are placed.
Ron Patterson
Ron,
I think you mean sabkhas, the most extreme examples being around Shaybah. However, Ghawar really isn't like that either. It most parts, the wells all look like that suggested by the photo below from the middle of Uthmaniyah. They bulldoze the sand into berms surrounding a big flat area for the drilling equipment etc.
Shedgum seems to be less sandy, and as a consequence, it is harder to spot the wells.
Indeed, which is why I mention spot height measurement before. It probably is possible to get some heights - but its nowhere near as simple as an area where you are talking of a hard surface over the entire area. Don't forget SAR is an interferometry based approach, you need something to base measurements on.
Given the other question marks it would need some serious exposure of real data to know if the measurements were credible and what the error bars were.
With Differential SAR Interferometry (DInSAR) one can detect subsidence rates of 1mm/year provided that many SAR images are available, there are stable features/structures seen by the radar (the Persistent Scatterers or 'PS') and that the subsidence-rate behaves nicely (smooth/linear behaviour in time).