 | DrumBeat: May 8, 2008 | The Oil Drum | A protein possibility for the "oil we eat:" the in-vitro meat beast! |  |
45 comments on Saudi Arabia's Ghawar Isn't Sinking (but has apparently moved)
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
| Show without comments | PDF version
45 comments on Saudi Arabia's Ghawar Isn't Sinking (but has apparently moved)
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
| Show without comments | PDF version
Search The Oil Drum with Google
Support The Oil Drum
Recently on TOD:World
TOD:Campfire
TOD:Europe
- Unique Times -- and the Future
- Peak Gold, Easier to Model than Peak Oil? - Part I
- Carbon Capture and Storage
TOD:Canada
- In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
- The Round-Up: October 24, 2008
- Compressed Air Energy Storage - How viable is it?
TOD:Australia/NZ
- The Bullroarer - Friday 27th November 2009
- International Energy Agency calls 'Peak' on OECD Oil Demand
- Australian Senate: Peak Oil motion defeated 31:6
TOD:Net Energy
Blogroll
Energy Sites
- The Coming Global Oil Crisis
- Die Off
- Dry Dipstick
- Energy Bulletin
- From the Wilderness
- Life After the Oil Crash
- Peak Oil Crisis
- Peak Oil News and Message Boards
- Powerswitch
- Rigzone
- Matthew Simmons
- Wolf at the Door
Environment & Sustainability Sites
- The Daily Green
- EcoGeek
- Eco Street
- Green Car Congress
- Green Options
- green.alltop.com
- Gristmill
- RealClimate
- Sustainablog
- Treehugger
- WorldChanging
Blogs
- Casaubon's Book
- Cleantech Blog
- Clusterf
k Nation (Jim Kunstler) - The Cost of Energy
- David Strahan
- Early Warning
- The Energy Blog
- European Tribune
- GraphOilology
- Health After Oil
- jeffvail.net
- Mobjectivist
- Peak Energy (Australia)
- Peak Energy (USA)
- R-Squared
- Resource Insights
Finance & Economics Blogs
- The Big Picture
- Calculated Risk
- The Crash Course
- Ecological Economics
- Econbrowser
- Environmental Economics
- Infectious Greed
- The Mess That Greenspan Made
- Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis
Organizations
Peak Oil Primers
Beware email scams!
Beware email scams claiming to be from this site. We do not have any job openings. If anyone contacts you about a job at The Oil Drum, do not reply to them, and definitely do not give them any personal information or send them money. Read more here.
“So one may almost say that the theory of universal suffrage assumes that the Average Citizen is an active, instructed, intelligent ruler of his country. The facts contradict this assumption.”
—James Bryce (1909, 35)
User login
Contact
- Content: editors at theoildrum dot com
- Tech support: support at theoildrum dot com
Personnel
- Editors: Nate Hagens, Gail the Actuary, Prof. Goose
- DrumBeat Editor: Leanan
- Contributors: ace, Engineer-Poet, Heading Out, jeffvail, JoulesBurn, Sam Foucher, Robert Rapier
- TOD:Campfire: Glenn, Jason Bradford
- TOD:Europe: Chris Vernon, Euan Mearns, Francois Cellier, Jerome a Paris, Luís de Sousa, Rembrandt, Rune Likvern, Ugo Bardi
- TOD:Canada: benk, Libelle
- TOD:ANZ: Big Gav, Phil Hart, aeldric
- Emeritus: Stuart Staniford
- Technician: Super G
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
GAIA Host Collective
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.